Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The White Paper on Better Regulation, published two and a half years ago, includes a commitment to carry out an analysis of all the pre-1922 legislation. The first part of that project was completed with the enactment of the Statute Law Revision (Pre-1922) Act 2005, which was finalised last December. The first part of that would have dealt with much of the legislation Deputy Sargent mentioned, which would have been there before 1937. The statute law revision (pre-union) Bill represents the second phase of that and will involve an analysis of all the legislation dating from before 1 January 1801, when an Act of Union came into operation, to decide what should be retained or appealed as appropriate.

The Bill states by means of a white list all the pre-1801 statutes that are to be retained because they are still in use. The white list refers to approximately 300 statutes, while all the others from that period, that is approximately 2,300, will be repealed and for convenience these will be listed in a separate Schedule to the Bill. The public consultation process on the application of the Bill was completed approximately a month ago and the final decision on the number of statutes to be retained or repealed will be taken following submissions from that public consultation process. It will be the biggest repealing measure in the history of the State, repealing almost as many statutes as the total number of Acts enacted since 1922.

In due course other statutes will have to be repealed but that will take time. The work for the next year will be on the 2,300 statutes. It is a phased period of work set out over the past few years and for the next few years. This work will continue in the coming years until we have a modern Statute Book for legislation and statutory instruments. That is possible because of the work that has been going on for the past decade or so. We will get that into good order in probably the next five years but it is a big task and the number of people working on it is small. The personnel are steadily clearing and sorting our legislative base.

The Law Reform Commission has agreed to undertake the restatement project. Once this is up to date an Act should be restated by amending legislation. That will be guided by a steering committee that will comprise representatives of my Department, the Office of the Attorney General, the Law Reform Commission and other Departments. They will be requested to attend the committee from time to time as the work is relevant to their office. The heads of the Bill were approved by the Government a few months ago. My Department and the Office of the Attorney General arranged a public consultation process and that process has concluded. The Bill will be ready for the House in the autumn.

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