Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Fundamentally, there are a few things we need to accept. If one has an investment treaty, one must have some form of dispute resolution system. An investor court system is as good as any and better than an investor-state dispute settlement, ISDS. This will not be renegotiated. It has been ratified by most member states. I would not like Ireland to be the country that holds this up.

It features in other trade deals. There are dispute resolution mechanisms in approximately 2,000 investment treaties. It is in the EU-Mexico deal. If we hold up CETA because of this issue, we will have to hold up the Mexico agreement too. That would be a big mistake and would damage relationships with Mediterranean countries and Latin American countries, in particular. While Canada might resile from aspects of this in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA, it is signing up to it in the Pacific agreement. It is not going out of fashion. It may in time be replaced by some sort of world trade court, which I would not object to, but I imagine people will make the same arguments against that as they are making against this system.

Governments can always be sued and often the cases I hear people citing in their opposition to CETA have nothing to do with CETA. They are taken under other treaties or national laws. Governments can be and are sued by companies. It does not mean the companies win the cases. Vice versa, governments sue companies. That can be seen in our courts today. On the fear of being sued having a chilling effect, I do not get that argument. One may as well prevent access to the courts or to justice because companies can sue states and states can sue companies.

It is important to say it works both ways. This is there to protect our companies and their workers if they end up in difficulty in Canada. This is something the EU wants and looked for. It was not imposed on us by Canada. We would like this in agreements with other countries, particularly where we have concerns about their court systems. We do not have concerns about the Canadian court system but there are countries around the world where we might be concerned about their court systems and would like to have an alternative mechanism such as this. This is something the EU wants rather than something being imposed on us. We want it to protect our companies, their workers and their owners.

The real advantage for an Irish company investing in Canada is that rather than having to navigate their system which involves many provinces, municipalities and national courts, there is a single mechanism. That is an arbitration panel comprising one Canadian, one European and one independent. The same is true for Canadian companies. Instead of having to navigate 27 countries with different constitutions and legal systems, they can have one system. That promotes investment. It is easier to invest in Europe if there is one mechanism that can be used rather than having to navigate up to 27 different ones.

I heard what was said in terms of the rush. There is no rush whatsoever. The agreement has been around for approximately ten years. It might have been the Fine Gael-Labour Government that signed off on it. Maybe it was not that long ago. We have had another Government and two elections since then. This is not being rushed in the slightest. It is happening really slowly. Of the 27 states in the EU, 15 have ratified this. We are a slow adopter, which is not where Ireland should be. We should be early adopters of trade agreements, not slow ratifiers. Whether it is a UN convention or an international treaty, we should ratify agreements we sign up to quickly. I would have made the same argument about the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Istanbul Convention and was keen to get them done during my period as Taoiseach. I am keen to get this done during my period in this office.

France was mentioned. The Assemblée Nationale in France has ratified this. We are behind them. It has not been ratified by the senate in France but it has been ratified by their lower house. It has also been ratified by the Bundestag in Germany but the vote has been challenged in the courts. So we are even behind countries such as France, which are not seen to be advocates of free trade. We are way behind on this. Far from a rush, we are laggards.