Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will make one final comment. I would hazard a guess that if this Attorney General had been in office when the Residential Tenancies Act was being drafted and passed, the same argument would have been made and it is an entirely legitimate legal argument. What the Minister of State is really saying is that it is not the severity of the fine that is the issue. Any fine would fall foul of the Zalewski judgment in the view of this Attorney General because this Attorney General is against any form of administrative justice, so it is not about administrative justice at a certain point of scale. Rather it is about any administrative justice. The only reason I want to put this on the record is that it does relate to the issue of fines. I suspect that if the Minister of State has a chat with the Attorney General and asks him whether we can have some level of fine, the Minister of State will probably find the same argument coming back, namely, that the determination of issues of justice shall be for the courts. However, there are many areas where certain levels of administrative justice are permissible under the Constitution and this is one case where I think it would be valuable. I just wanted to make that point. I will withdraw my opposition to the section and allow it to proceed but it is an important point to be considered.