Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I will not give a long response to the Minister of State's bait other than to say that nobody is denying the benefits of EU membership. What we are denying are the benefits of further integration, further loss of sovereignty and a further reduction in our independence. We welcomed and encouraged further enlargement and we have gone further than the Minister of State in encouraging that all new member states accede to the Union on an equal footing with existing member states. Earlier this year the Government refused that to Romania and Bulgaria.

Turning to the Bill before us, I asked the Minister a number of questions on Committee Stage about the effect of this Bill when enacted and what legislation it will cover. What are we retrospectively trying to endorse by this legislation? That is the nature of this Bill. The Supreme Court asked us to do this otherwise those legislative measures would have been found unconstitutional. I accept this must be done. I have not denied that but it should be done by the House on an individual basis in terms of the legislation concerned or at least in the full knowledge of the legislation that will be covered by the enactment of this Bill.

We do not have full knowledge of that. The scraps of three sheets of paper that make up this Bill do not properly explain the full extent of what we are dealing with today. I asked the Minister to insert in the Bill a schedule of the laws and statutory instruments to be retrospectively endorsed, but that was not produced. As the Minister has not proceeded that way and refused on Committee Stage to produce such a schedule, my amendment proposes to delete this and other sections of the Bill. Without the inclusion of such a schedule the wool is being pulled over the eyes of Members of this House but also, as my colleague suggested, this Bill is a coup d'état to a degree.

What we are doing is handing the Minister of State and future Ministers additional powers but we are handing the Minister of State in particular the power to retrospectively endorse a swathe of statutory instruments and legislation. For any person to have that type of power amounts to a coup d'état. At the very least and out of respect to this House a list detailing the full implications of this legislation should have been produced. The explanatory memorandum does not contain a such list. We do not know the number of legislative measures being dealt with in this regard.

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