Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not have any specific information about what is happening in other countries throughout the EU. I am basing my legislation very much on policy and principles and am seeking to find a mechanism through the Irish Legislature as to how we can design robust legislation for this issue. I have a very open mind about this. I would be quite happy were the Government to decide to take my legislation and to amend it significantly to allow for legislative passage of the Bill. I would very much welcome a further deliberation, if necessary, by this committee on some of those questions. If the committee decided that it was necessary to have further deliberations with outside persons such as experts in the field, I would be very happy to take part in that.

This Bill seeks to strengthen the Green Party Bill because the rebuttal by Government of that Bill was on the basis that it could run contrary to Single Market or treaty provisions. We have built into the legislation what we hope is a strengthening of that. A research report commissioned by the Commission in January 2016 stated it was unclear as to whether any of the existing directives or regulations that had been identified would be suitable. The EU is in a space at present where it has not come to a definitive position on this. It seems to be an iterative process. There is a school of thought that says that the Canadian and US legislation may not necessarily be transferable to an EU scenario. I have no doubt that there are challenges to passing this legislation but if we can move to the principle of the legislation and if this House decides that it wants to legislate for this, we can find ways of doing so.