Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom cur leis an bhfáilte atá curtha roimh an mBille seo. Labhair mé cheana féin ar roinnt de na Billí eile a cuireadh chun cinn roimhe seo. Measaim gur maith an rud é go bhfuilimid ag bogadh ar aghaidh go tapaidh, sa deireadh thiar thall, maidir le fáil réidh le hAchtanna, forógraí agus dlíthe nach mbaineann leis an Stát seo in aon bealach in aon chor. Ní chóir go mbeadh baint acu leis an Stát seo ó bunaíodh é, ar a laghad.

It is welcome that we are continuing the progress made of late to once and for all create an Irish Statute Book that is relevant, modern and accessible. One of my interests is history and we will return to that when I go into the details of the Bill itself. The job that has been done should have been done or begun in 1922 when the State was founded or, at the very least, when the State became a republic. It involves setting aside the laws, proclamations and statutory instruments that belong to another time. We are in that process at last. I understand the complications and that the Government cannot change legislation that has an impact overnight, for example, that relating to currencies and a range of other issues relating to property and title. However, we have grown up as a State to the point where it is appropriate that proclamations and statutory instruments cannot masquerade as law. They are not law. They are not live, have no relevance and are confined to history.

One advantage of this Bill is that it will create a Statute Book and associated instruments that can be accessible to the citizen given that we have the Internet. The idea is that the citizen is supposed to know what laws govern them. If one looks at some of these statutory instruments, one can see that they were proclamations of a different era where much of the public was not aware of the laws being created in Westminster and College Green on occasions. Most of these were not read by the Irish population in any shape or form and many of them were written in a language that was alien to them not just because they were not written as Gaeilge, but because the language in them was not accessible. It was an English vernacular that was not the vernacular of the Irish people. This echoes some of our criticism today about legislation, which is that it is not available in plain English. It is hoped that once we have finished with this, we can then start at the beginning and see whether we can address how inaccessible some of our legislation is to the public.

I have criticised the fact that legislation and explanatory memoranda are not available in the Irish language. Even this Bill is not available in the Irish language. This legislation is quite detailed. A promise was made by the Tánaiste to produce explanatory memoranda as Gaeilge. If this had been done, other Deputies and I would have found it easier to debate this as Gaeilge.

My other main criticism of this concerns the use of JobBridge. I argued with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform about this in respect of a previous Bill. I know the defence the Minister made but if there is a job to be done, it should be a paid job. Using JobBridge was wrong in this project even if it enabled participants to gain experience because it is not a long-term job. Funding should have been made available to ensure that those who were qualified received the rate commensurate with the job. It is a very difficult and onerous job.

We must take it on trust that all of the instruments, or as many of them as could be found, are contained in this Bill. We might come back in ten years time to find that somebody has discovered a few thousand bits and pieces. I do not think this will happen because I have met some of those involved in the project and they were enthusiastic and went beyond the call of duty on occasions to find the original manuscripts. I presume all of the legislation that is now being repealed is somewhere in the Department. It would be a very interesting and useful tool for current and future historians if all that revoked legislation was available in one source document. The repealed Irish Statute Book might be an interesting name for it.

As the Minister of State, others and some commentators in the media have said, some of this legislation is amazing. It bears no relationship to the current day or at least to the way our society is run. I remember one piece of legislation that stated that in order to get a divorce, a person had to get legislation passed in Parliament. It is not relevant to this Parliament. I find it strange that we still keep 40 instruments, one or two of which might have a logic to them. In a republic, I am not one for titles, pomp and ceremony. Citizens are supposed to be equal. Quite a number of the 40 instruments concern the transfer of names, basically titles, to allow succession. At this stage, I believe most of them are irrelevant but they are interesting. Perhaps the Minister of State can explain why we are retaining the 40 instruments because there are very few that deal with anything else. I presume the instrument concerning the Bank of Ireland was the order setting it up. Given that it was in 1624, I do not see the relevance of the proclamation concerning ambassadors and foreign Ministers.

Perhaps on Committee Stage the Minister of State will have time to elaborate further on each of them. The others are of interest only because they are being revoked. I would not want any of them to be retained, in particular those in which, as a historian, I have an interest in so far as they deal with the Penal Laws and the manner in which the British in particular sought to culturally annihilate the Irish people. They are quite specific. Most people presume that the Penal Laws relate to the early 18th century. However, it is evident from the proclamations dealt with in this Bill they date back to the 16th century and are specifically targeted, on a religious basis, at papists. Anybody who had the gall to rise up against them had their land confiscated. A series of these proclamations were made in the 1560s in relation to Shane O'Neill. As I said earlier, these are of historical interest. It is hoped they will be available in one source online.

Before I stray too deeply into historical matters, I would like to address the change being made to section 6, which is logical, to remove the obligation on the State to provide the Chambers of Commerce etc. with the legislation. The list in this regard includes the National Library of Ireland, the Law Library, the King's Inn Library, the Law Society of Ireland, the Southern Law Association, which I presume is the confederates in Cork - I do not understand the difference: perhaps a Cork man can explain to me why they stand out from the rest - and the Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford Chambers of Commerce. We have moved on from this. If I were to make any suggestion, it would be that some of the universities should be included in that list. Everything is now available online. This is a recognition that within hours of legislation being passed, and even prior to it being passed, it is available online to students and practitioners of law. For this reason the proposed change is appropriate.

There is one particular issue of concern to me. The derogation in relation to the Defence Act is to be retained. I have not researched in detail the reason this derogation is to remain separate. Why does this apply only to the Defence Forces and not the Garda Síochána? Is there a particular reason for this such as, say, the secrecy of declarations of war and so on? I do not understand why statutory instruments related to the Defence Forces would be subject to greater secrecy than statutory instruments related to operational matters of An Garda Síochána. Given where we are as a society today, this strikes me as interesting.

This is dream legislation to any historian. Once one delves into it one finds interesting nuggets. Even though in many instances all one now gets is the new citations, these are welcome because some of the proclamations had no citations and would not have been accessible. We now have citations relating to proclamations on phrases such as "To Hell or to Connaught", which most people presume relates to the movement of people out of Dublin and Leinster and into Connemara. However, the "To Hell...." part of the phrase is interesting. There is a declaration abolishing transplantation to the West Indies. The West Indies was "Hell". Montserrat is in the West Indies. It was almost destroyed by a volcano a number of years ago. In terms of the phrase "To Hell or to Connaught", those who were not willing to go to Connaught were put in boats as slaves and sent to the plantations in the West Indies. The declaration I referred to earlier ended that practice. There are other declarations that refer to the offering of a reward of £5 for the discovery and punishment of Jesuits and seminary priests. There is a declaration setting out the means for conversion of the Irish and the elimination of the Irish language. These proclamations, we were taught in school, formed part of the Penal Laws. However, they did not. The Penal Laws followed. These are the laws that applied prior to some of the harshest Penal Laws. There is a period of 100 years when different groups of laws applied. These are more to do with Oliver Cromwell's time. The number of them introduced in 1655 in particular is interesting. There are others which are not necessarily interesting in terms of national history but would be interesting to local historians. For example, there is a proclamation which banned the use of a well in Rathfarnham. No. 126 on the list is a proclamation inhibiting resorting to the well near Rathfarnham upon pain of death. It would be interesting to know if that was because the well was poisoned or if it was because the well was to be exclusively retained by the landlord there. That is perhaps a job of work for a local historian. Perhaps we will see something related to that inHistory Irelandin the future.

There is also a proclamation banning Easter because of drunkenness and debauchery and so on. It is not only in recent times that there has been drunkenness around religious festivals such as St. Patrick's Day and so on. Back in the 1560s the Irish were enjoying themselves and those who were in charge, many of whom were puritanical, did not take too kindly the celebration of religious feasts, particularly religious feasts that cut across some of their declarations. In terms of Leinster House, in 1798 a proclamation was issued promising a reward for the discovery of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was wanted for high treason. Leinster House was raided by the Red Coats because his brother was the owner of this building and its surrounding land. However, this proclamation is now being repealed. I do not think anybody ever claimed that reward.

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