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

Section 1 provides for the repeal of the 301 Acts that are listed in the Schedule. The approach taken with this section differs from previous years, and previous Statute Law Revision Acts. With previous Acts, it was the practice to deem all statutes of a particular category, for example, secondary instruments prior to 1821, to be repealed with the exception to those statutes listed in the Schedule. This was because these Acts repealed several thousand statutes, leaving only a handful in force. It was reasonable, therefore, to list only the legislation that was being retained on the Statute Book. In this case, it is more reasonable to list the spent and obsolete Acts in the Schedule and provide for their repeal in the Bill. That is what we have done in this section. The Schedule lists the specific Acts identified in the course of the review as appropriate for repeal because they have ceased to be relevant or have become unnecessary.