Mr. Rupert Schlegelmilch:

I will kick off with a few answers then I will invite my legal colleague, Mr. Brown, to complement my points.

The question of regulatory chill has been at the heart of the debate and we recognise that. The first part of the answer is clearly that, as the Deputy mentioned, in the past we have seen cases being taken. Indeed, the Energy Charter Treaty, in particular, and other treaties have been so vague that people have taken cases, which could be seen to make people more cautious. However, in my view this is certainly not the case with CETA. One of the reasons for the reform is that we need greater clarity. For example, a clause was put into CETA, which states that for greater certainty, the mere fact that a party regulates in a manner that negatively affects investments or interferes with investor expectations, including its expectation of profit, does not amount to a breach of the obligation. We looked at the cases and the issues that were out there. I must emphasise that we did this because it was in our own interest - not just that of the local regulator in Ireland. It is also in the interest of the European regulator, which produces lots of legislation, for example, on the environment, which might be costly; or in the area of agriculture, in which there is major debate on what can be imposed. That is where we have taken great care to avoid a situation and to make sure and reaffirm the right to regulate for legitimate policy objectives such as public health, safety, environment, public morals and social issues. All of that is in the treaty, including the protection of cultural diversity. We went some way to making sure that the right to regulate is spelled out and CETA cannot be used against it.

On the issue of regulatory autonomy, my only comment would be that to some extent, the question is whether any international treaty or legal act affects that autonomy. Again, we are not doing anything that is not contained in local constitutional laws and so on, which place certain limits on what the State can do to its citizens. Nothing is expanded in CETA or any other international agreement. I will stop here because Mr. Brown will want to comment on the more legal aspects of it. However, from a policy perspective, I wish to underline that we spotted all of these issues because there were a number of cases out there. We tried to address the concerns in the written part of the agreement