Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Stanton for his engagement on this issue. I know he is a strong supporter of the proposal. It is important for the research community. As a Government, we are very committed to delivering the referendum. It is an important change which will really help that community. I will point out that we encountered a number of hurdles along the way. First, there were two constitutional challenges internally in Germany. We had Brexit. There were a number of areas that delayed the actual proposition getting to the people, unfortunately, and when we got to that juncture we were fast running out of time. We know the Electoral Commission prior to this had signalled in other referendums the need to have time to inform everyone in due course. We were concerned that it could be drowned out in the discourse around the mayoral election, the European elections or the local elections. It is a very technical proposition, there is no doubt about it, and we cannot afford for it to be jeopardised. We have written to all stakeholders to re-engage and see what exactly they are doing and, on the other end, what the key sectoral interests are doing to promote and explain the importance of the patent court to all their members. We are engaging on that at the moment and we will then make an assessment and a whole-of-government decision about the referendum.