Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

Fine Gael welcomes the publication of this Bill and the debate thereon. We support it wholeheartedly. Having listened to the Minister's contribution, I can understand how the public finds it so difficult to engage with EU issues. So many of the issues are technical, but my saying so is no reflection on the Minister.

The European Union Bill 2009 fulfils the requirement to give domestic effect to the Lisbon treaty. It is mainly an administrative measure and is similar to the legislative instruments passed in the aftermath of Nice treaty ratification in 2006. The Bill provides for a number of measures independent of giving domestic effect to the treaty, including providing the mechanism for increased parliamentary oversight of European affairs provided for in the treaty and the mechanism designed to allow statutory instruments implementing EU measures to have continued effect where a measure has been repealed and replaced.

The process for adopting EU treaties into the Irish legal order has two distinct strands, international ratification and domestic integration. The objective of sections 2 and 3 of the European Union Bill 2009 is to update the European Communities Act 1972 to take account of the State's ratification of the Lisbon treaty. An identical procedure was followed in the wake of the ratification of the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice treaties. The only difference in this case is that the European Union now has legal personality. In other words, it will be the subject of international law after the ratification of the Lisbon treaty. There is a slight difference in terminology in this instance. The Bill refers to the European Union established by virtue of the Lisbon treaty and the European Atomic Energy Community throughout.

The key part of the Bill implies that the European Communities Act 1972 is updated so both the foundational treaties and the Acts of the institutions shall be binding on the State and be part of the domestic law thereof. This part of the Bill therefore completes the integration of the Lisbon treaty into the domestic legal order.

Section 4 makes a technical amendment to the European Communities Act 1972. Section 3 of that Act had originally provided authorisation to Ministers to make regulations deemed necessary to give full effect to the adoption of European law into the domestic law of the State. However, the original section precluded Ministers from introducing indictable offences by way of this secondary legislative regime. Section 4, like section 2 of the European Communities Act 2007, will allow any Minister to create an indictable offence by regulation if he or she feels the State's European obligations require the creation of the offence. I ask the Minister to clarify this matter when he replies to this debate.

Section 6 updates the definition of "measure". Section 7 deals with the role of the Oireachtas. Advocates of the Lisbon treaty argued that one of the benefits of the treaty was its promotion of parliamentary oversight at member state level. In principle the treaty of Lisbon provides for three types of procedure according to which the treaties may be amended: the ordinary revision procedure; the simplified revision procedure; and what is known as the passerelle, or bridging, procedure, which the Minister dealt with extensively in his speech.

Section 8 provides that statutory instruments that give effect in domestic law to Acts of the EU institutions that have been repealed and replaced by codifying Acts shall have effect as if they had been made for the purpose of giving effect to those codifying Acts. The section does not apply to primary legislation and only applies where no substantive change in the law has been made. Although substantially similar effects have been achieved in domestic legislation previously, owing to the European dimension, this is a unique provision in this Act.

Fine Gael welcomes this legislation. I thank the Minister for his Department's co-operation with Fine Gael and for the consultative meetings we had with him and the Taoiseach in the lead-up to the referendum campaign. I think it is no exaggeration to say that no one wants to hear the name Lisbon again.

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