Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am going from my notes provided by the Department because this is quite legally precise. The legal advice from the Attorney General regarding the requirement for primary legislation was based on the Supreme Court decision, as the Senator may know, in Zalewski v. Adjudication Officer and Others in April 2021, which raised notable constitutional issues which further impacted the transposition. The Supreme Court decision set down new procedural requirements for non-judicial decision-making bodies when involved in the limited administration of justice. This decision necessitated the transposition group to entirely alter its approach to the transposition. Any attempt to transpose the code without complying with that decision would have been unconstitutional and legally infirm and therefore would not have constituted a proper transposition of the code in the event.

That is one of the reasons that, even with the Attorney General's decision in March 2021, it still took some time first to completely recast how we would transpose the directive and, second, go through all of the legislative mechanisms. The Senator will know from experience the drafting and passing of legislation through all Stages in the Houses can sometimes take time. Unfortunately in this case, that resulted in Ireland being in lengthy infringement.