Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

The courts would be happy if regulations were subject to some type of oversight and debate in the House rather than simply placed in the Oireachtas Library. The intention is not to delay. The Minister is correct that some of these amendments are not contentious. The amendment seeks to give more powers to the House. There is nothing to prevent a series of these regulations being made, given that a number of provisions in the Bill permit regulations to be made by the Minister. The Minister can schedule all of them together. It is similar to how the European scrutiny committee deals at present with approximately 400 European regulations, directives and so forth. Some of them go through with no major scrutiny by the committee but are agreed on the basis of the advice of the officials and the related documentation. At any stage, however, a member of the committee, or any Member of the House who attends the meeting, can call a halt and seek scrutiny or clarification of the measure. That is the type of system that should be in place given the number of regulations.

The Minister might be correct in terms of the weight of legislation versus regulation but virtually every recent legislative measure from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform that has come before the House has given the Minister power to make regulations. These are important measures. Sometimes the teeth of the legislation can be contained in the regulations that are made afterwards, and we do not have an opportunity to review them in every case. That is the basis for proposing these amendments. It is not an effort to delay the legislation or to prevent the objective of the Bill coming into effect. In fact, the opposite is the case. It is to ensure that the collective wisdom of the House is brought to bear to ensure the best regulations are put in place.

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