Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on her appointment as committee Chair, all of the new TDs who have been appointed to this committee, and those who bring much experience with them, which I hope we can work and learn together from.

I am pleased to bring the Statute Law Revision Bill, SLRB, 2024 to the committee. The Bill was introduced in the Seanad on 23 October 2024. It passed Report and Final Stages on 6 March 2025. On 26 March, the Bill passed Second Stage in Dáil Éireann.

The SLRB 2024 is the latest in a long series of measures that have been enacted to modernise and improve public accessibility of the Statute Book and secondary legislation. It is vital that laws and regulations in Ireland be fit for purpose and regularly reviewed and updated. The statute law revision programme is Ireland’s national programme to identify and remove obsolete and spent primary and secondary legislation from the Statute Book. The purpose of the programme is to repeal legislation that has ceased to be in force due to change of circumstances or the passage of time and legislation that, while technically in force, is no longer of relevance in practice. There has been a particular need for such revision in Ireland because our unique legislative past has left us with a complex stock of legislation, with enactments from the Parliaments of Ireland, England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom as well as our own Oireachtas.

The statute law revision programme is already responsible for six distinct but complementary Statute Law Revision Acts between 2005 and 2015, which have successfully repealed all obsolete primary legislation enacted prior to Independence and, in addition, have revoked all obsolete secondary legislation made up to 1 January 1821. To date, more than 100,000 pieces of legislation and secondary instruments have been reviewed and either expressly or implicitly repealed under the programme. This Bill, when enacted, and the six previous Statute Law Revision Acts will collectively be the most extensive set of repealing measures in the history of this State and the most extensive set of statute law revision measures ever enacted anywhere in the world. I thank all of those who have breathed life, blood, sweat and tears into this over the past number of years. It has been a mammoth task.

The benefits of statute law revision are well documented and include: the creation of certainty as to which laws remain in force; the modernisation of the Statute Book; the enhancement of public accessibility to the Statute Book; and the codification or consolidation of the statute law of the State.

It is in the public interest to proceed with this Bill because the proposals will assist in reducing the regulatory burden for businesses, industry and citizens by simplifying the complex stock of legislation currently on the Statute Book. They will also help provide legal clarity. The importance of simplifying this complex stock was noted with approval by the OECD review, entitled "Better Regulation in Europe: Ireland 2010", which reported that initiatives such as the Statute Law Revision Acts were impressive efforts to address the challenge and improve accessibility.

The principal purpose of the SLRB 2024 is to repeal spent and obsolete secondary instruments enacted on or after 1 January 1821 and before 1 January 1861. This Bill will also repeal those instruments enacted before 1 January 1821 that are still in force and were not repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 2015. The process leading to the Bill involved a review, carried out by the Law Reform Commission and sponsored by this Department, of more than 40,000 secondary instruments to ascertain if they were obsolete or were to be repealed or retained. Of those, more than 3,000 will be repealed by the Bill, and they are listed in Schedule 2.

Schedule 1 lists the specific instruments that are to be retained. Schedule 2, as I said, lists the instruments identified in the course of the review as appropriate for repeal at this stage because they have ceased to be relevant or have become unnecessary. The instruments listed in the Schedules were reviewed in a public consultation led by the Law Reform Commission.

Many of these instruments offer remarkable insight into the social and administrative fabric of earlier times. For example, the Bill revokes hundreds of proclamations issued on a county-by-county basis. When we had this discussion in the Dáil, many TDs went back and looked at their constituencies and what was relevant. It was fascinating to hear all of those historical facts in the Dáil. There were 426 proclamations, with Tipperary having the highest number, reflecting perhaps the social unrest and particular administrative challenges of that region at the time. Dublin had 71 proclamations, which often addressed highly localised and time-specific matters – things like the control of livestock and public safety – that are not relevant in the modern era. One particularly striking example was a proclamation prescribing the exact form of a prayer to be used during the Great Famine. It is a reminder of the strong overlap between civil governance and religious practice that existed in the 19th century.

The Bill contains more than 2,500 proclamations on things like offering rewards for apprehending suspected criminals, and they are things we will be revoking. While many of these criminal offences remain recognisable today, the period also saw several distinctive forms of criminal activity. Instruments included proclamations regulating the breaking of eggs, the burning of cowsheds, beatings with nettles and the posting of threatening notices with regard to land, votes and potatoes, matters that would now be dealt with through entirely different regulatory channels. These examples, some solemn and some curious, demonstrate just how specific and context-bound much of our historical delegated legislation was. Now, they appear quaint or obscure in certain circumstances, and their continued presence on the Statute Book creates unnecessary complexity when it comes to our laws.

The amendment of the Schedules proposed in this Bill is therefore essential. It helps declutter the legal landscape and brings clarity to our Statute Book, eliminating obscure and outdated provisions that no longer reflect the values or administrative needs of a modern democratic state.

In the course of the debate in the Seanad, concerns were raised regarding No. 1 in Schedule 1, which was the Genealogical Office Order of 1685.

I am happy to inform the committee that, following engagement by my Department and the Law Reform Commission with Senator Boyhan, who raised these matters with us, the Genealogical Society of Ireland, which had made the request, and the director of the National Library, these concerns have been addressed. I am bringing amendments to the committee to revoke the 1685 order in question. I thank Senator Boyhan for his work on the Bill and for engaging meaningfully with officials in my Department and with the Law Reform Commission regarding the appropriateness of this. When we have good engagement with our parliamentarians, it can help to strengthen our legislation. It was great to see our officials working on that. It is a clear example of practical and respectful engagement, and I hope that continues today.