Dr. Kyla Tienhaara:

I thank the Senator for the question. I completely agree on the point about transparency and it is very disturbing that these deals are essentially made behind closed doors. The issue with transparency is not just that policymakers and the public do not know what is going on but that some people are invited to the room early on who influence the outcomes. There is pressure put on by industry groups to have certain provisions, including investor-state dispute settlement. I understand there are certain problems in the EU context with that extra layer but this is a problem across the board with all trade agreement negotiations. Some efforts are being made in some places to have special committees, for example, that can see documents early on and which try to give expert input. The problem is these committees are usually skewed towards industry and not so much from the perspective of public interest groups around the environment, health and so forth.

Increasing transparency in these deals is definitely important. The point was also made about the provisions in these deals defining how case outcomes occur but I would quibble with that a bit. There has been effort to reform investment provisions in recent years. We are seeing that arbitrators are finding ways to get around this and lawyers are finding creative ways to ignore these provisions. There was a very recent case concerning a mining company. Despite the fact there was an explicit exception for environmental provisions, this did not mean the states did not still have to compensate the investors.

These tribunals have far too much power to be able to interpret these matters in the way they see fit. It is really based more on ideology than the actual terms in agreements. I see transparency having value but ultimately the reform effort appears worthwhile. This goes back to the point that these treaties have no public benefit nor do they do anything of value for the public. There is no reason for the public to have to accept the risks associated with them.

Very briefly I can step out of my investor-state dispute settlement role and put on my global development studies professor hat in order to comment on the more general discussion ongoing about renewable energy. I plead for everyone to think not only about how clean renewable energy is within Ireland but the impact that it has on other countries, where earth minerals and so forth are extracted, sometimes under really horrible conditions that have human rights or environmental implications. I definitely want everyone to move to 100% renewable energy.

We also have to think about ways to reduce our energy usage. We cannot just constantly try to have more and more renewable energy ad infinitum. Thinking about whether we need things like data centres has to be part of the conversation. We should not just be talking about getting to 100% renewable energy.