Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

The Green Party supports this attempt to rationalise the Irish Statute Book. It is unfortunate that the debate we are having is truncated to the extent that due to the scale of the legal instruments before us it would, at least on Committee Stage, warrant more attention than it has been given to date. We are talking about thousands of legal instruments. We must take it on trust that the deletion of 3,000 or so statutes as a result of this Bill will not leave a hole in the Statute Book and that they represent legislation that has been properly adopted since the foundation of the State.

I would like to see more detail in the Bill in respect of the 1,348 remaining statutes. The Schedule is 20 times longer than the Bill. While an attempt has been made to represent each of these Bills in some type of graphic form, I do not really need to know the year, session and chapter in which these Bills were passed. The subject matter is certainly a help, but I need to know the extent to which these Bills need to be retained in the Irish Statute Book because there is no explanation whatsoever there. As has already been mentioned, the inclusion of some of these Bills seems curious, to say the least. They include the early statutes from the time of Richard, Duke of York, to have fairs and markets in Ratoath and the legislation ensuring that Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary is not burnt by rebels. Is the Government saying that somehow there might be a repetition of these events in the near future or that it would like to have this legislation on the Statute Book just in case they occur? Another example of such legislation is one concerning the pardon of fee farm and grant of custom and cocket of the City of Cork to the mayor and commons there. Having been a member of Cork Corporation, which is now Cork City Council, I never knew I had the grant of custom and cocket and would certainly like to know what it is. Somehow, the Government seems to think this legislation is worth retaining.

More sinister perhaps is the retention of the Parliamentary Privilege Act of 1471, which concerns freedom from arrest of Members of the House of Lords coming to Parliament, and their servants, and the Servant of the Prior of the Hospital to be released. I hope the Servant to the Prior of the Hospital has been released by now given it is 500 years later. Somehow, someone has decided that this legislation needs to be incorporated in the Irish Statute Book.

A law from the 15th century has also been retained. The Courts Act of 1476 requires lords to wear their robes in Parliament and judges and barons to wear their habits and coifs in term time. I do not know if the Government is thinking of dressing up Members of this House, but, again, I find it curious that this legislation needs to be retained.

Some of the Bills seem to talk about areas one thought would already have been talked about by legislation passed since the foundation of this State in 1922. There is legislation about the foundation of hospitals that are no longer in existence, for example, Mercer's Hospital in Dublin and Cork Infirmary. I would have liked a more detailed explanation as to why there is a need to retain these items of legislation.

From a purely constituency viewpoint, I note there were several items of legislation before the Act of Union such as the City of Cork (Improvement) Act, which I still think is a good idea. It appears to have been one of the last items of legislation passed by the old Irish Parliament before the Act of Union in 1801.

There is a curious item of legislation from the period after 1800 which the Government wants to retain, namely, the Portumna Bridge Act, relating to the removal of tolls and the taking in charge of that bill for public improvements. Perhaps the only reason this legislation is retained is because the Government considers it might have some application in terms of buying out the West Link toll bridge. Given that it was done in the middle of the 19th century, perhaps the Government would learn something from a previous Government about how a toll bridge can be taken out of existence.

The real problem with the proposed legislation relates not so much to the listing of outdated statutes or even the retention of some legislative items that appear to maintain some type of relevance for the legal code, but to the lack of any kind of intention from the Government to replace the retained 1,348 items of statute. I would like to see a timetable from the Government stating how it intends to replace all these statutes by new legislation. Is it possible to do this in an all-embracing Bill such as this purports to be or does it need to be done by way of individual items of legislation?

It is curious the Government has referred in its legislative programme to the replacement of some Acts on the list that are being retained. Reference to a Curragh of Kildare Bill was a constant feature of the programme in recent years, prior to this year, but the Government has decided to retain the Curragh of Kildare Act dating from the mid-19th century. There are many inconsistencies in the listing being supplied to Members of the House. I regret the information supplied with the draft of the Bill is insufficient. We do not have adequate time to give a proper inspection of the proposed legislation. That said, and all frivolity aside, there is no doubt this is a necessary exercise, one which we would probably need to repeat on a regular basis — perhaps every five or ten years. It would require a great deal of work from the Attorney General's office to keep us up to speed in this regard.

A possible way of circumventing the lack of examination afforded to this Bill is to convene a standing committee of the House, in the same way as we have a Joint Committee on European Affairs to consider the thousands of statutes emerging every year from the European Union, and to try to incorporate them into Irish law, despite the near passage of the European Communities Act which appears to be an attempt by the Government to subvert that process. It would be valuable work for a standing committee of the House to examine legislation that has become outdated and reincorporate it into modern legislation.

The Green Party will not oppose the Bill but we hope much of what has been said in the debate will be taken on board in future legislation in this area.

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