Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

There would be an uprising.

The Minister stated in the first page of his speech that hundreds of regulations, directives and legislation have been transposed into Irish law that we are going to deal with retrospectively. May we have a copy of all these pieces affected by this legislation, specifically those which will be underpinned by statute and which were previously secondary legislation found by the Supreme Court to have no standing? A list could be placed in the Oireachtas Library so we could see what we are talking about. The provision of such a list of documentation referred to in section 4 would be a simple matter. The section states that every statutory instrument made before the passing of this Act shall operate retrospectively. The least we would expect is to have that here as part of the corpus of information made available to us.

This is a very serious matter and it is important to address it in the House. This debate should not go to a vote at the end of the process today and time should be allowed for a proper hearing. The Bill was passed through at very short notice by the Seanad with a minimum of debate. Members apparently did not recognise the implications and it has been tabled for discussion in the Dáil on an afternoon when many Deputies must travel home early. It is very difficult to give it the debate and time it requires. There should be scope in the Dáil for a proper debate.

There is no question of anybody on this side of the House not supporting the European project. We are strong supporters of it. As the Minister of State will be aware because he is present on many occasions, every time I speak in the National Forum on Europe on the project my contributions are positive towards it, the benefits that have accrued from it, its future and how I wish to see it being expanded, democratised and enlarged so that the benefits of the European Union can be extended to other countries which do not avail of them. We are speaking of an expansion and deepening of the values, principles and structures of the European Union. That is where we must address this issue.

Whatever way one looks at it, this legislation is undesirable. It is almost pointedly undesirable at this juncture because the entire European Union project is in jeopardy. It is in jeopardy because the citizens the length and breadth of Europe perceive that the European Union has become removed from their daily lives and that decisions are being made in an ivory tower far away from the reality of the life they are experiencing. As a result, they are suspicious of the bureaucracy and they will certainly be more suspicious of increasing bureaucracy where the element of democracy is being further eroded.

We are here trying to bolster up the European Union, to get structures in place and to reassure people that the European Union is relevant and is not operating in a high-handed or undemocratic fashion, and the Minister of State is here presenting a Bill which will pass all power on European directives and on all legislation needing transposition into domestic law to the Minister concerned, who will then decide at his discretion how to transpose it. The Minister concerned will be able to alter, amend and transpose such legislation as he or she thinks fit. That role, the examination, scrutiny and passage of legislation, is one for the electorate's representatives in the proper forum.

As I stated, the European project is in considerable jeopardy because of the lack of perceived accountability and transparency in the European Union's structures and law, and the failure to consult when key decisions that affect citizens' lives are being made. There is a waning of confidence and we saw that clearly in Ireland's case, to which the Minister of State referred. In his speech he did not give the reason we put together in 2002 legislation to provide for Oireachtas scrutiny of EU legislative proposals, directives etc. That happened, not out of the blue but because Ireland rejected the Nice treaty in that year and because the Labour Party proposed such legislation and the establishment of the National Forum on Europe as a means of informing the public at large and providing a forum for discussing what is happening in Europe. It was an attempt to deepen the knowledge and awareness of the citizenry of what was happening and to introduce a level of accountability. That was the reason. We did it because we were quickly losing the confidence of the Irish people and the electorate, who had perceived the European Union as having become too distant and too uncaring.

Ireland is not alone in that regard, as the Minister of State will be aware. Last year France and the Netherlands rejected the constitutional treaty because they had similar concerns about the decision-making process in the European Union and about accountability and transparency.

In the debate in the House yesterday the view of a considerable number here was that the project had become stagnant and becalmed because in the past 18 months the European Union has been going nowhere. It is unlikely that it will go far over the forthcoming 18 months as European leaders endeavour to find a way forward from the position of lack of citizenry confidence in the European Union as expressed in the "No" vote by France and the Netherlands. Will we add to that through this legislation?

The European Council summit in December was a damp squib for that reason and we discussed that yesterday. The Council could only tread water on the important matters. The Finnish Presidency passed on to the incoming German Presidency the task of finding a way out of the present morass, which is really underpinned by lack of confidence. As a result, all the decisions needed on enlargement were put on the long finger, as were decisions on a common European policy on cross-border activity to deal with justice and security issues, and important issues relating to the trafficking of children and women. A common immigration policy was also kicked to touch.

This legislation will significantly further alienate the public and increase the democratic deficit because it will enshrine in domestic legislation an absence of Oireachtas scrutiny of primary legislation and will hand over to the relevant Minister the authority to make discretionary decisions on critical issues affecting citizens lives. It is, as I stated, legislation by statutory instrument. There will be no debate. There will be no amendment through this House. There will be no consultation. There will be no democracy.

A Bill that provides for a maximum fine of €500,000 and for depriving a citizen of his or her liberty for up to three years for indictable offences is not one which should be legislated for by statutory instrument. It is not sufficient to simply place such a statutory instrument in the Library and not lay it before this House. Indeed, it is highly ironic that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, who jealously guards Irish jurisprudence against all comers in a European context and who will not tolerate any intrusion in the Council of Ministers' meetings by the European Union in matters of security and justice, is now prepared to tolerate an entire corpus of criminal offences and penalties which would be created and transposed into Irish legislation at the drop of a hat.

It makes a mockery of the principle of national subsidiarity if EU directives are simply rubber-stamped by Ministers and national parliaments are bypassed. The Minister of State let the cat out of the bag by stating:

We could use primary legislation in each case but this would tie up the resources of the House on routine EC issues, leading to unimaginable delays and increasing the risk of exposing the State to significant fines. We need to be able to continue to use statutory instruments . . . Were we, however, to use primary legislation in all cases, this House would have to sit 365 days a year and debate nothing else but EC laws to implement the wide range of our EU obligations.

We speak of primary legislation, not in all cases but in important cases.

The Minister of State has a problem. This problem was created by the two Supreme Court decisions that found we were operating ultra vires which meant we had to address the matter. Should we address the matter by digging a deeper hole or dealing with the problem we face? Should we address it in the context of the principle of subsidiarity which allows us to deal with our issues in our own way?

I think the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Treacy, will have to find another way to deal with the huge corpus of directives coming from the European Union because they are so important. We put through legislation here and at the same time more important legislation is transposed into Irish law by statutory instrument, and now we are doing the same.

How should we solve this conundrum? I do not think anyone here has an adequate answer. We should have proper accountability and transparency and there should be a structure in place that involves the Oireachtas. We should deal with legislative matters from Europe in the same manner we deal with domestic legislative matters that come before this House.

I believe that the Minister of State should first have provided as much information as was available to give us the full corpus of statutory instruments that have been transposed to date. We should establish an all-party committee to examine the problem we face. How do we reconcile the origination of regulations, directives and laws from Europe with our requirement to democratically scrutinise every piece of legislation passed into law? We are the legislators and were elected as Members of this House to do that. We are not entitled to pass that duty to the Minister of State, or any other Minister, under any circumstances. The Minister of State is a member of the Government, not the Legislature, but the Government is now taking over the role of the Legislature. The line Minister will legislate not only for some of the legislation which the citizens of this country will have to obey but, probably, for a majority of it.

See this speech in context