Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I understand the sentiments expressed by Deputy Kehoe. I explained on Committee Stage that while I agree with the sentiments on which these amendments rest, I do not propose to accept them on the grounds that they are, first, unnecessary and, second, they would create technical difficulties in regard to the freezing of statutes to be made publicly available.

I noted in committee that the principle thrust of amendment No. 4 is already contained in section 3(3) of the Bill, which has regard to Schedule 2, while amendments Nos. 5 and 6 will be overtaken by the programme of statute law revision upon which the Government has embarked. In addition, there are a number of technical difficulties with these amendments in that they would freeze the list of statutes to be made available at a future point in time to those statutes listed in the Schedules on the day the Bill is enacted. However, it is important to remember that by the end of the five-year period suggested by these amendments, a great deal of the Acts currently listed for retention in Schedule 1 will have been repealed by other legislation — for example, the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Bill will repeal approximately 10% of the Acts in Schedule 1.

On Committee Stage I indicated that should any Act currently listed in Schedule 1 remain on the Statute Book in five years that had not at the point in time been repealed, I would be happy to make a copy of that legislation available electronically. On the basis of that response, I ask the Deputy to withdraw the amendments.

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