Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is not ideal, but we were up against a particular deadline. We were not aware that it needed to be primary legislation in the first instance and when that was brought to our attention, we felt we needed to work quickly so that there would be no potential period whereby the previous provisions applied, which involved far lower financial and imprisonment penalties. It was just to make sure there was no gap in the law as it stands in terms of transposing the directive.