Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It is difficult. We do not want it to be the case that if a European member state has a system where people can be arrested, subjected to the criminal law process and deprived of their liberty on mere suspicion and without a decision to charge them, it can as an extension require any Irish citizen anywhere in Ireland to be plucked from his or her job and brought to that state in custody without ever once having the opportunity to say that he is just going through a process to be excluded as a suspect in a case and is being deprived of his liberty in a way that is totally disproportionate to the effect on that person.

When the Minister acceded to this framework decision, the Government made a unilateral declaration that Ireland accepts its obligations under it, subject to the understanding that warrants would not be enforceable in Ireland simply because a law was passed in some other member state or the criminal justice system in another state was one where people could be requested from all over Europe to come to participate in a process to weed out suspects. That is what we are doing. It may not be the most satisfactory arrangement but it was the best we could do at the time.

Having put this safeguard in Irish law, I do not want to make it unworkable and to have the European Commission say that we have made the European arrest warrant unworkable in Ireland. I want it to work on a presumption of good faith on the part of our colleagues. To avail of the Irish declaration, an issue cannot just be raised simply to require a rebuttal, there must be a substantial reason before the court can be moved to investigate this issue.

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