I have been listening to the debate and what some of the speakers have said. I have concluded that the world through the eyes of Deputies Murphy and Boyd Barrett must be incredibly clear because there is no nuance whatever in what they have said. The claims they made about the intentions of this Government and about what this agreement has done are completely unsubstantiated and completely false in my opinion. I do not claim to be an expert in trade law but I can read and I have read the relevant aspects of the agreement. Let us start with the first misapprehension from those two speakers that I have listened to. The anticipation or the promise of profit is not a basis on which somebody can go to the investor court and have a decision overturned. Second, it is not the case that governments' legitimate policy aspirations can be overturned by investor courts. Third, it is the case that such agreements exist in all kinds of commercial agreements between companies and indeed between states. The Members will know that arbitration exists in all kinds of areas, including in binding areas. The suggestion I have heard from some of the speakers in this debate is that this will completely upend our legal system, that the courts will no longer have any jurisdiction and will completely end the system that we have enjoyed since the foundation of the State whereby we, as the people, are sovereign and actually make decisions. The reality is that systems like this already happen in all kinds of agreements, both between us and other countries and between companies as well. It is entirely reasonable. It is absolutely creating what are called investor courts but it is an arbitration mechanism that is binding. That is what it is and that exists in all kinds of areas. Listening to some of the speakers today, one would think that this is exceptional although at the same time they have said that this is already happening; it is not new. Yet we already have systems that work in terms of international trade. Here is the kicker for me. We are a small island on the periphery of Europe, as big as we like to think we are within the European Union and as much as we might punch above our weight. Our economy, which is an open economy, depends on trade first and foremost. The things that Deputy Boyd Barrett has just lamented so much have provided the quality of living in this country and the fact that we exist in the top ten of pretty much any metric that can be picked to assess the quality of life for people in this country and what they enjoy. That exists because of trade, because we are open to trading with other countries and because we are a fair country that abides by agreements just like this one. What CETA seeks to do is to further that trade relationship with Canada. It is in my opinion a benign agreement that will benefit this country and its citizens, not for 20 years but I hope for generations to come. That is what it is. Contrary to what Deputy Murphy said, the Supreme Court did not say, for example, that there were constitutionality issues with the existence of these courts. It absolutely did identify issues and this Bill addresses those issues per the Costello judgment. However, there have been extrapolations from that judgment that I do not think are correct. The reality is that what we are debating today is whether we are willing to put in place the mechanisms that are proposed in the Bill, particularly section 4 inserting the new section 25A, to ensure that this country can benefit from CETA allowing enhanced and beneficial trade with Canada. In order to somehow muddy the waters around this what has been dragged in is that US companies could use a Canadian subsidiary company to get involved in investor courts or somehow to challenge the Irish Government's decision on fossil fuels. Of course, that is true but such a subsidiary company would have no more standing than any other company. What has been said repeatedly in contributions not just from the last two speakers, but from other speakers, is that companies can sue or can bring legal action or litigation. Again, of course, they can and that is happening. They can bring such an action at any time; it does not mean they are going to win it. When talking about investor courts, we are talking about a panel of independent highly skilled international experts with representation from both sides, Canada and Europe. It is not as if it is being sent off to some unrepresentative body that does not know anything about this or is hell-bent on some kind of new world order that is going to change the face of the earth for the rest of us. That is not the case. Those speakers are trying to create some kind of bogeyman, suggesting to people there is something to be afraid of in this legislation; there is not. As I have said, the speakers themselves say this has been happening for years. It has and yet we still have a fair and accountable global trade system. It is not perfect by any means, but it delivers for this country and it is very important for the economic survival of this country. The point is that it is not a bogeyman because it is something that applies the rule of law. If a company does decide to sue Ireland for whatever it might be, the decisions that the investor courts, the arbitration body, would make would be in accordance with the provisions of the agreement and the rule of law. That is what it would do in exactly the same way, by the way, that the High Court would. The only difference is the High Court is an Irish institution. If the argument being made is that only Irish institutions should make judgments on disputes between companies and states, then those Deputies have severely misunderstood the patriotism of our High Court judges because High Court judges have proven themselves time and again to, without passion or fear, apply the rule of law whether it is to Ireland's benefit or not and they would do the same thing. That is exactly what the investor court system will do. That is the law.
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Let me explain to Deputy Murphy what the law is in case there is any doubt about it. Yes, the High Court interprets Irish law but CETA will essentially become the law for these disputes between companies and states or between states. We are signing up to that law. We know what that law says. It will be applied in exactly the same way that a High Court judge would interpret any law. By the way, High Court judges do not just deal with Irish law. The High Court deals with contractual disputes all the time in which it parses agreements between individuals and companies. So, the law is more than just the statutes that are passed by this House or the orders signed by Ministers. The law is a complex nebulous thing that is made up of all kinds of documents from all kinds of different sources. In this instance, the law would not just be the CETA agreement, but the agreement between the individual companies or what they have agreed with particular entities. That would be the law that would be assessed by an investor court. So, let us put aside this bogey-man nonsense, which has been going on for some time now. There are a couple of things we should actually be looking at in the context of passing this legislation. We know it is there to allow us to ratify the CETA agreement. Is the CETA agreement good for Ireland and good for Irish people? It absolutely is. I will come back to the comments I made about this being a small, open economy that relies on positive trade with other countries around the world. It is good for the Irish economy and the people living within the Irish economy. Looking at the CETA agreement and the provisions within it, which include these investor courts or this arbitration system, are they something we should be afraid of? Why should we be afraid? The only rhetoric I have heard in this debate as to why we should be afraid is that it is not Irish courts making the decision, but an arbitration body, albeit one made up of independent people and experts in their field and people who have no skin in the game. That is where decisions will be made instead of in Irish courts. One would not be any more confident of a result going the way one wants it to go in an Irish court than one would in the investor court, though. In fact, the greatest confidence one can have in terms of how a decision might go is whether it is in accordance with the rules or the basis on which that decision was made. In the instance of a dispute between, say, a Canadian company and an Irish Government, that is based on the agreement between them and the provisions laid down in the CETA agreement, but there is nothing in here that we should be afraid of. I have spoken to a lot of trade law experts about this and a lot of people on both sides of this debate and they are not afraid of the things - the bogey-men - that my friends on the opposite side are putting out there, so let us be reasonable about this. We cannot say there is anything in this that is actually going to destroy trade or force the Government into particular policy positions. Of course, Governments cannot behave capriciously, but that is already the case under Irish law and European law, so there is no change there. However, it is very clear that the CETA agreement does not provide in the relevant articles a right for companies to expect certain profits. Reference was made to changes in relation to, as Deputy Murphy said, a left Government prioritising non-fossil fuels, as if no other Government could possibly do that despite the fact that this Government has been fighting to reduce emissions in this country for I do not know how long. Let us say for argument's sake that a future Government tries to put in place a policy that is going to be detrimental to petrochemical companies. There is nothing in the CETA agreement that would allow such a petrochemical company, be it Canadian or a US-owned Canadian subsidiary, to go to an investor court and say it thought it would be pulling in the big bucks for the next ten or 20 years.
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There is nothing in the CETA agreement that gives a legitimate expectation, which is the umbrella legal term that covers this, to a company-----
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-----that it will continue to make profits to a particular level.
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There is nothing to prevent any Government, be it an Irish Government, a French Government, a Latvian Government or a Cypriot Government, from implementing legitimate policies, which we do as a sovereign country and a sovereign Parliament. There is nothing to suggest we could not do that in light of the CETA agreement. Having listened to many of the speakers in this debate, I really do think that the opposition that has been put up is a string of bogey-men that are not real. They do not actually reflect the reality of what is in this. I say that having looked into this in quite some detail and spoken to people who know a great deal more about trade law than I do. It is not there.
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We benefit from this because we benefit from improved regulated international trade in the current global environment, where trade, particularly rules-based trade, is being consistently undermined by the big players like the United States. I join with the condemnation of how America is behaving in terms of international trade. This is actually the antidote to that in many respects. Agreements between countries that create a framework for companies to exist within that regulatory environment is the way we promote a global rules-based trade system. Without that, we are nowhere. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking that rejecting CETA by not passing this legislation will somehow lead to the Irish people being better off. They will not be. The opposite will be the case. Irish people will be very much worse off without international rules-based trade systems. CETA is part of that, and I genuinely believe that Irish people individually and collectively, and the Irish economy, will be much better off as a result of signing that agreement between Canada and the European Union and allowing that framework to exist to promote and enhance trade between Europe and Canada. That is to all our benefits. We should be passing the law because it was correctly identified in the Supreme Court that there were issues with the Act, which this Bill fixes. Let us get on with the job of passing the legislation, signing up to CETA and allowing those benefits to be there for all of the citizens of Ireland.
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