Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

Or both. There are serious implications, which the Minister and the Government have not fully studied. For example, the degree to which public utilities, institutions or services, such as sewage treatment systems, impact negatively on the environment will mean inevitably that someone will have to be imprisoned if the Minister proceeds as he proposes. As the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is most likely to be the Minister responsible, we will have to wait to see whether that Minister will be imprisoned or whether another scapegoat will be found. We will bypass the national Parliament if we proceed down that road.

It is a significant provision. We should not take that route. We should at all times recognise that to get authority within the State for a measure of this nature, we should first discuss the issue in the Parliament. We should put it before the House for 21 days and allow Members of the House to raise questions and debate it if that is deemed necessary.

This is a form of legislation by stealth. For many years, at least as long as the Minister of State, Deputy Treacy, has been in the House, I have repeatedly seen the erosion of the rights of Parliament to the benefit of Ministers. It is a European trend. However, this country has a direct election system — we elect directly to Parliament — which does not necessarily apply to all European countries. There are those who will extoll the benefits and merits of list systems and other systems — they may even extoll the merits of electronic voting, about which we know, and other expensive systems — but the fact remains that we have an entitlement to follow our procedures and to make sure that the supremacy of the Houses of the Oireachtas is not handed over to the bailiwick of a Minister, who can make statutory instruments, directives or regulations, which in turn have sweeping effect and have a major impact on the people.

The Bill, as well as granting Ministers too much unscrutinised authority, will validate legislation retrospectively. It will validate all statutory instruments made since 1973 to transpose EU legislation into Irish law, including those that comprise a criminal sanction. The problem with this is the retrospection. The Minister of State, Deputy Treacy, has no way of knowing what impact this will have. He may have some indication as to the likely impact in the event of A, B or C in a particular sequence. We in the Opposition do not have at our disposal the resources to ascertain the full extent to which the Minister of State has received any such communication but I can think of numerous cases where the Minister of State, or a colleague from the House in a future Government, would be faced with a serious problem that arises directly as a result of the way this Bill is proposed.

We need European law and the EU to be closer to the people. This has already been demonstrated in the referenda held to approve the European constitution. I do not know who advised on the timing of the Bill or on its necessity, but it is an insensitive time to bring it before Parliament in any EU member state. After all, the necessary procedures to approve the European constitution have failed so far in any country that required a referendum, although a number of countries require only parliamentary sanction. Unless something has happened of which I am not aware, we have not yet arranged a referendum, although I do not know why that is the case. We were so enthused about the constitution's integrity, I am surprised we did not have the referendum before the Bill. In a democracy, the referendum should have come first.

I do not think France has approved it yet, but perhaps the Minister of State has some insight in that regard. The Netherlands has not approved it either and as far as I know neither it nor France have recanted yet. I resent receiving lectures from any other country as to what we should do, how we should comply and the procedures we should follow in order to comply. Our system of democracy is as good, as true and as tested as any other and, for that reason, this proposal is ill-judged.

If we want to bring Ireland closer to the European Union and the European institutions closer to the people, the more we enhance the democratic role of the Oireachtas, the greater the chance of our approval of any future legislation relating to the European constitution. It is all very well to say we will deal with the issue another time and get it through then or that everyone knows our membership of the European Union has been hugely beneficial. It has, but let the Minister of State not forget that a number of people throughout the country are not so enthusiastic about the result of some of the recent negotiations, for example, on CAP reform and various other matters over the past 12 months. The cessation of the sugar industry here is not remembered with fondness as far as the people are concerned. When bureaucrats and Ministers sit down and congratulate each other on their successes, the loss of the sugar industry is not likely to be considered one.

In that regard, an extraordinary situation has developed with regard to the plethora of proposals that came from the WTO agreements. It is now deemed to be eco-friendly to import food from Latin America, Australia and New Zealand at a time when the environment and global warming is a major issue. I have never heard such extraordinary nonsense.

Members on the Government side should be aware that we still have a vivid memory of the people directly affected by the closure of the sugar beet industry. That action was taken without any parliamentary consultation. The deed was done behind closed doors and we were told this was how it had to be. Nothing has to be done in that manner. We have a Parliament and there should always be input from Parliament before a decision is made. The Minister of State seems to be at sea in that regard.

See this speech in context