Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Effectively, the court, in referring to the Cityview Press Limited case of 1980, stated:

[I]t was agreed by the parties that under the Constitution (in particular Article 6, s.2, and Article 15, s.2, sub-s.1) there is a limit upon the extent to which legislative power may be delegated to subordinate agencies by the Oireachtas, and that it is not competent for the Oireachtas by such delegation to abdicate its legislative function.

The judgment of Laurentiu goes on to state:

Both sides appear to have been agreed that one way of reconciling the powers of legislature with those of the executive was if the legislature formulated policy and the executive implemented it.

Further down, the court recites:

One of the tasks of legislation is to strike a balance between the rights of individual citizens and the exigencies of the common good. If the legislature can strike a definitive balance in its legislation so much the better. But the problem which confronted the Court in the Cityview Press case is that the facts of modern society are often so complex that the legislature cannot always give a definitive answer to all problems in its legislation. In such a situation the legislature may have to leave complex problems to be worked out on a case by case basis by the executive.

The following is the key point:

But even in such a situation the legislature should not abdicate its position by simply handing over an absolute discretion to the executive. It should set out standards or guidelines to control the executive discretion and should leave to the executive only a residual discretion to deal with matters which the legislature cannot foresee.

This is constitutional guidance from the Supreme Court. I particularly emphasise the need to set out standards or guidelines. There are no standards or guidelines prescribed within this legislation. This is not some sort of lone isolated judgment delivered by the Supreme Court many years ago; this is a decision of May 1999.

More recently, we had the Bupa case on 16 July 2008 in which it was alleged that unconstitutional delegation of powers had taken place. The court never had to determine that because of other technical issues that arose.

See this speech in context