Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

Exactly. If this Bill is passed, it will more than likely be enacted within two weeks.

The Bill aims at narrowing the options available to members of the public who are seeking justice and proper recompense before the courts when they have been wronged. These people are not wrongdoers. They are innocent victims who have been subjected to some form of personal injury but it seems that the Government now wants to punish them.

They are consumers. The Minister repeatedly referred to the rights of consumers but he is totally ignoring their rights in this Bill. It is his duty to protect them, but he is attacking them by railroading this legislation through the House.

The effect of the legislation will be to blackmail people away from their legitimate right to recourse to the courts. That right should be sacrosanct and, indeed, is sacrosanct in the Constitution, and the Minister will tip the balance in favour of wealthy insurance companies and away from the rights of consumers and claimants in legitimate personal injury cases.

This crucial legislation is being rushed through the Dáil as though it were emergency legislation, which it is not. I want the Minister to tell the House what is the urgency to amend the Bill enacted only in 2003. What is this urgency to amend such new legislation? Why not review the operation of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board? Why railroad through this ill-conceived amendment Bill?

The constitutionality of the proposals in this Bill really is the crux of the issue. I have major concerns about aspects of its constitutionality. It has been brought to my attention that the legal opinion of probably the most eminent senior counsel in the country in the past few days was furnished to both the Minister and the Attorney General and I want to know what the Minister is doing with that legal opinion. Will he take it on board or will he merely cast it aside and ignore it?

There are two specific provisions in this Bill which constitute the essence of what is unconstitutional. First, section 51B(2) is blatantly unconstitutional in that it imposes a blanket ban in all circumstances on the recovery of costs in subsequent litigation conducted by a solicitor in respect of work done during the course of the PIAB process. That, in effect, is what the Minister proposes.

A raft of case law has consistently held that the right to recover costs is an inherent aspect of the right to access to the courts under Article 34.1 and Article 40.3.1° of Bunreacht na hÉireann. Cases such as Heaney v. Ireland and Murphy v. Greene have set out in great detail learned judgments — if the Minister is unfamiliar with our constitutional law, I would be happy to explain it in further detail to him — not to mention the O'Brien v. PIAB decision in 2005 which challenged and defeated the Government's attempt to quell people's opportunity and right to legal representation through the PIAB process.

In addition, section 51B(1) is unconstitutional because it is retroactive. If the Minister's legislation is passed, people who are currently going through the PIAB process will not be able to claim their legal costs for that process which is totally unjust and unfair.

The Minister can chooses to ignore the clear legal facts here at his peril. It would be remiss and arrogant of him to ignore the constitutional issues here. As the Minister will be well aware, of course such action is not unprecedented. Last year virtually the same Government chose to ignore the constitutional lacuna in the statutory rape legislation, and we saw what happened there. I would ask the Minister not to make the same mistake again.

Fine Gael is asking the Minister to make a clear choice. He should withdraw this legislation and come back to the Dáil in the next session when we can debate this properly and, hopefully, have an opportunity to vindicate the rights of citizens.

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