Sadly, I too would like to start by expressing my absolute disgust that this debate will be guillotined after just an hour. It railroads any meaningful analysis of the Bill. I am under no impression that most of our amendments are going to go undebated tonight and undiscussed. That a mere hour has been dedicated to discuss what will ultimately be a transformative agreement for this economy and for our future trading partnerships is deeply disturbing. From the beginning, this Government has demonstrated carelessness in the oversight of the ratification of CETA. We have seen that through the constitutional challenges. The lack of pre-legislative scrutiny for this Bill is scandalous. The Dáil select committee and the joint committee have heard no independent expert advice as part of the legislative process for this Bill. The Government continues to rush ahead despite expressions of concern from two Supreme Court justices, one sitting and one former, Mr. Justice Charleton and Mr. Justice Hogan, respectively. Indeed, Mr. Justice Charleton has said that CETA has "...unlimited powers of interpretation of a vague set of principles within the treaty." This is a pretty concerning statement, but this Government does not seem to care and is instead ploughing ahead with a Bill that could have extreme consequences for us all. We should not be surprised, however, because it is an action befitting of this Government. It is trade at any cost, which leads to deregulation and rash decisions made in the pursuit of wealth, with no thought given to the long-term economic health of this country. If these concerns alone do not demonstrate that this agreement requires far more intense Government scrutiny than a discussion tucked away for an hour before home time, I do not know what does. This amendment, and many of the amendments we are looking at this evening, seek to strengthen the safeguards and the obligations of due diligence on any Minister in the handling of treaty negotiations and trade negotiations. All we are trying to do is bulwark against what I see as handing over our sovereignty willingly to arbitrary investor courts that will haul us over the coals. It will have a chilling effect on this House, on the parliamentary procedures of this country and on our ability to build any sort of just transition or build into our policymaking any social or ethical concerns. I was at a round table today discussing AI and the regulatory gap because I see this same deregulation under the banner of simplification and harmonisation across all Government policy right now. I heard a European expert describe the EPP, the Minister of State's European grouping, as uncritically pro-business
Sentiment score: 0.06
For me, that is exactly what is happening here, so I support this amendment and look forward to debating further.
Sentiment score: 0.54
In response to the Minister of State's comments on Deputy Ó Laoghaire's remarks, a single vote under Article 29.5.2° is sufficient to ratify and the Government planned to do that on CETA after less than two hours of debate in a situation where such a ratification would have had multiple breaches of our Constitution. The Supreme Court, in response, identified a potential but unvalidated path to ratify, but not to protect Ireland. I agree with others that the Minister of State's allegations of fearmongering are completely unfounded because we have seen time and again and have detailed examples of where these investor courts have been problematic. He should consider instances like France and the Canadian oil and gas company Vermillion. In 2017, Vermillion produced 75% of France's oil and lobbied alongside several other companies against the Hulot law, which was a progressive French policy that sought the end of fossil fuel extraction and banned the renewal of exploitation permits. The mere threat of awards was enough to make the French Government backtrack on its policy and instead it allowed all current exploration and exploitation projects by oil companies to continue being developed without any constraints for more than 20 years. I could go on listing the many human rights abuses ISDS schemes have caused or the moments big corporations took money from taxpayers like with Lone Pine Resources versus Canada, a case that has been unresolved since 2013 that could see Canada lose more than €100 million. The ICS, which is the body through which companies will seek award from this State via CETA represents a mere repackaging of the ISDS systems that have been denounced across the world by human rights groups and academics alike. As such, there is plenty of evidence and we are not misinterpreting what the ICS is. We know full well the difference between the ISDS and the ICS and we are not fearmongering.
Sentiment score: -0.01
I will pick up on a couple of the comments from the previous debate which apply to this amendment as well. I am still dumbstruck that we had no pre-legislative scrutiny. There is virtually no debate tonight, or not enough. I agree with Deputy Gogarty in that as much as I value the debate on football, it could have been pushed back for a week and we could have had more opportunity to properly analyse this. We should have had experts giving their opinions on this. We have had so many expressions of concern regarding all of this. Putting aside the fact CETA will expose the State to investor state dispute claims and awards with relatively little protection, the Government's proposed section 25A will allow the Minister to make trade details with barely any Government scrutiny, so with hardly any due diligence. This is in particular when we consider that the new section 25A(1) is not limited to the ratification of CETA but also includes the advanced framework agreement between the European Union and its member states and the Republic of Chile and, alarmingly, any other international agreements. To be clear, this involves rewriting our entire approach to trade. These amendments are set out to build in those better safeguards and the due diligence we believe is appropriate for any such activity by any Government. It is in that spirit that these amendments are put forward.
Sentiment score: 0.23
Does the Minister of State understand the ability of the CETA joint committee to amend the text of CETA, which is effectively what Mr. Justice Hogan described as "quasi-legislative" capacity bypassing the Oireachtas? If the Minister of State is wrong, we will be exposed for 20 years even after we signal withdrawal and possibly more given that the whole EU may need to withdraw. The CETA joint committee can amend elements of the text, adding to interpretations on areas where we will be exposed. I will read from paragraph 17 of Mr. Justice Hogan's judgment in the Costello case: Would the ratification of CETA be unconstitutional inasmuch as Article 25 CETA allows for the Joint Committee to give interpretative decisions which bind the CETA Tribunals, thus compromising the democracy guarantee in Article 5 of the Constitution? Answer: Yes. An interpretative ruling of this kind is really a form of quasi-legislation which in practice amounts to a de facto amendment of CETA. Even though such an interpretative decision might well – and probably would — involve a (potential) charge on public funds in the course of what might well amount to the de facto amendment of an international agreement, there would be no procedure whereby the prior consent of Dáil Éireann could be obtained in the manner required by Article 29.5.2. That is Article 29.5.2° of our Constitution. The killer point is that the defence provided in section 25A of the Bill only works if the claim comes before our courts. This is a false protection the Government is putting forward under section 25A. It is a scurrilous vehicle to bypass the constitutional protection we all treasure. It leaves our State exposed.
Sentiment score: 0.19