Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

The Attorney General decided that in terms of best practice, it was best to delimit the areas whereby immunities and privileges can be granted by a Government and that they should be specified, rather than unspecified. That is what we are doing here. It is a tidying up operation. It has not been occasioned by a crisis, constitutional, legal or otherwise. The Leontjava case brought into relief a potential issue which is now being addressed, which is proper. Sometimes in this House in the past, such matters were left alone and not dealt with and we were dependent on other legal cases to bring issues into sharp relief. Potential defects became actual defects in subsequent cases. This is not a dramatic move to rectify a defect that was exposed by a court case. The Attorney General has advised that this is the best way of ensuring that a possible defect does not come into sharp relief and become a problem. In effect, we are limiting the Executive's or the Government's potential to prescribe as it sees fit. We are delimiting and setting out clearly, by way of legislation and orders, how people will achieve immunities under the convention.

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