Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I may be about to surprise Deputy Murphy with my response. I am not going to accept her amendment because we believe, having checked up on this matter, that the provision relating to the appeal or amendment of a set of regulations, either wholly or partially - this is the point Deputy Murphy was making - already exists. I take the Deputy's point. Let us suppose a local authority brings in a by-law and it has a particular area or issue that it wishes to deal with. Deputy Murphy is suggesting the authority would have to look at the entire issue all over again and for various reasons that might not always be feasible. In the course of our work preparing a response to Deputy Murphy's point we encountered section 22(3) of the Interpretation Act 2005, which provides: "A power conferred by an enactment to make a statutory instrument shall be read as including a power, exercisable in the like manner and subject to the like consent and conditions (if any), to repeal or amend a statutory instrument made under that power and (where required) to make another statutory instrument in place of the one so repealed." The key point is the reference to amending a statutory instrument. The advice that we have received from the Parliamentary Counsel is that further legislative provisions are not required for this purpose because provision already exists.