Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. O'Sullivan for presenting himself here today. I must agree with many of the previous speakers. This comes down to the qualms and legitimate worries relating to the investment court system in particular. I fear it is being left open for corporations to argue they have possible legitimate expectations of profits. Obviously, as legislators, we want to introduce public good legislation.

The climate action Bill was mentioned here. Had we already been signed up to the investment court system, ICS, would we have left ourselves exposed, leading to a chilling effect on us, as legislators?

Imagine we want to introduce a ban on the importation of fracked gas in the future. A corporation may argue that on the basis of what Canada and the EU signed up to in the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, CETA, or another agreement, the laws changed in this State had impacted on it and its ability to make a profit, even though we change the legislation in the best interest of our people. I am worried about that.

The EU and other major countries and trading partners have recently come up with trade agreements in which they have disabled or decoupled the investor state dispute settlement, ISDS, part so as not to leave themselves exposed. Why we would leave ourselves in this situation and what can we do from this point?

I accept Mr. O'Sullivan has given certain answers but we could hold off on ratification which would not become an issue until everybody else has ratified. I assume there would be a huge issue in going against ratification. Mr. O'Sullivan has said opening a renegotiation would be difficult but anything would be feasible at the point in time in which Canada, or another country, became aware of major issues.

We signed up to this in 2016 but there has been movement away from the ICS part of the deal in particular in relation to other trade agreements. I do not see why we would sign up to something that could leave us exposed to corporations that could make a determination on the basis of their legitimate expectation of profit against our right to legislate for the betterment of our people.