Mr. Rupert Schlegelmilch:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. Again, they are absolutely to the point of what we need to discuss here. On the question of how to deal with the rights and concerns of workers and people who are not investors, we are trying to address that in the sustainability chapter, where we make sure workers, unions and NGOs have a seat at the table. The investment protection part is specifically for companies because companies invest a lot of assets, to put it like that. That is not putting it above the dignity of workers or the asset of work, which is also human capital, but it is a different situation. We are trying to make sure the trade agreements can be scrutinised for these aspects through the dedicated mechanism of the domestic advisory group and the civil society forum, complemented, of course, by the legal implementation of the ILO conventions, which are expressly called upon to be implemented and which provide the basic rights, such as the ILO’s right of association and so on. We have found another mechanism to strengthen these rights. If I may say so, this is very important and we have used it in the free trade agreement, FTA, with Korea, whereby we have taken the Koreans to court under the dispute settlement system of the trade agreement for not fully implementing ILO conventions. Therefore, our agreements do provide protection in a different form for our workers and employees.

On the second question on the deferral of the decision, I have said what I have to say. It is not for me to say anything on the sovereignty of the Irish Parliament in this respect. All I can say is that the normal way of things under international law, if I am not mistaken, and Mr. Brown may want to come in on this, is that there is a legal expectation that you follow through on what you have signed up to in the Council on this particular point.

On the question of NAFTA and US-Mexico, this is slightly ironic because the US-Mexico deal, the USMCA, as it is called, does have investor-state dispute settlement but the Canadians wanted to reform the system and the Americans did not want to, so it is there for the Mexicans and not for the Canadians. It may be that the new US Government would have seen things quite differently but, in any case, it is clear this is more a question of the impossibility of doing away with the sort of thing we did away with in CETA. There have been a number of cases that American companies had taken under the old system, although the Canadians were keen to reform it as well. Since they did not get their way, the decision was taken to take it out. It is not that they do not want it, but just that the Americans were not flexible enough to deal with the issue.

Mr. Brown may wish to comment further.