Mr. John McKeon:

The Oireachtas has delegated the power to make regulations to the Minister. The regulations do not actually exist until the Minister signs them. There may be some procedural difficulties. The Chair will know better than I the difficulties associated with Standing Orders. In this case, I do not believe the Department or the Minister would have any particular issues but I am conscious of the wider legislative construct whereby the Oireachtas delegates authority to the Minister, the Minister signs the regulations and then submits them. Subject to that caveat, I do not believe the Minister or the Department would have a concern. We just need to watch our Ps and Qs on this and not to step outside normal process. That is all. The other thing to note is that we have not seen the text of the regulations but the note sets them out honestly and objectively. There is nothing in the regulations that is not in the note we have provided to the Oireachtas today. We deliberately included that bit of detail so that, when committee members see the regulations, they will not see anything we have not mentioned.