Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the introduction of the Statute Law Revision Bill 2016 and I am glad that, as Deputy Calleary said, Fianna Fáil is supporting its passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas. The purpose of the Bill is to remove from the Statute Book a series of laws that are unnecessary, archaic and obsolete. For example, some of the laws this Bill seeks to repeal are Acts introduced by the Free State Oireachtas in 1932 and 1933, when the founder of our party was unwinding the provisions of the Irish Free State Constitution. They remain on the Statute Book but obviously that is unnecessary. They are only of historical interest. There is also legislation on the Statute Book at present which deals with the allowances that Members of the Oireachtas were entitled to receive. The Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) (Amendment) Act 1947 provides that Members of the Oireachtas are entitled to have travel on first-class trains to and from the Dáil. We have moved on from that in recent years.

In many ways a statute law revision project can be compared to a spring cleaning of a very large old house. Prior to 2003, there were laws on the Statute Book that dated back to the 13th century. Most of those laws are obsolete, although some of them still remain in operation. However, the reason for this project is not that it is of historical interest to have people going through ancient laws but that it is important for the purpose of a modern republic and society that citizens and other individuals know the laws of this country. One cannot understand definitively or assess accurately the laws of the country if the Statute Book contains a series of other ancient laws that are obsolete. Prior to 2003, a person trying to identify what laws still remained in force in Ireland would have been astonished to learn that our Statute Book was still full of these ancient laws that were not in operation.

There have been a number of projects in Ireland to clean up the Statute Book and remove archaic laws from it. These laws did not just commence with the establishment of the State or during the life of this State. The first Statute Law Revision Act was enacted in 1856. It was described as an Act to repeal certain statutes which are not in use. There were then a series of other Statute Law Revision Acts between 1861 and 1908. After Independence, there were two major statute revision initiatives, the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962 and the Statute Law Revision Act 1983. In fact, it is instructive to note that the 1983 Act led to the repeal of the Act of Union passed by the British Parliament in 1800, which was still on the Statute Book.

Nothing further was done about cleaning up and removing obsolete laws after 1983 until, in early 2003, the then Attorney General, the late Mr. Rory Brady, senior counsel, commenced a new process of reviewing pre-Independence legislation which had not been comprehensively re-examined for the previous 20 years. The then Attorney General was encouraged to do this on foot of proposals made to him by Mr. Justice Richard Humphreys, who at that time had a particular interest in cleaning up our Statute Book. It is important to consider what has been done to date. As was mentioned by the Minister, five laws have been enacted to date since the project first commenced in 2003. They are the Act of 2005, which repealed a selection of pre-1922 statutes, the 2007 Act, which was a comprehensive revision of pre-1922 public general Acts, the 2009 Act, which revised all private Acts up to and including 1750 and all local and personal Acts up to and including 1850, the 2012 Act, which revised all private Acts from 1750 to 1922 and all local and personal Acts from 1850 to 1922, and the Statute Law Revision Act 2015, which revoked secondary instruments made before 1 January 1821.

The total number of Acts involved in this process is enormous. Great credit must be given to the individuals who went through these thousands of Acts with the purpose of assessing them and determining whether they should be recommended to be repealed by the Oireachtas. For example, the 2007 Act examined a total of 26,191 Acts. The 2009 and 2012 Acts between them reviewed over 33,000 Acts and repealed thousands of them. In terms of total repeals, the 2012 Act repealed 21,936 Acts at a stroke. The 2015 Act reviewed secondary legislation such as proclamations, orders in council and similar instruments. In total, 12,841 measures were reviewed for that purpose and 5,782 measures were revoked in the Act.

In total, as a result of all the five Acts to date, a review has been carried out by individuals hired by, or working in, the State of an extraordinary 72,849 laws, each of which had to be individually assessed. It is important we acknowledge the important and great work that has been carried out by those individuals who have gone through all those Acts for the purpose of assessing whether they need to be retained or repealed.

This project has been supported by Attorneys General since 2003 and it has now been sponsored by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It is a wonderful project that is improving the condition of the laws in this country and making it easier for our citizens to know what laws are in place. How can a person say they are part of a democracy when they want to look at the laws and on doing so cannot figure out which are the operative ones and which are the obsolete ones?

The reason I wanted to speak on this Bill, and I thank Deputy Calleary for permitting me to do so, is that I tabled a question to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform on the statute law revision project because I had a concern that, as we had gone so far with this project, we should complete it. There is still work to be done. Legislation from 1950 onwards and secondary legislation from 1820 onwards need to be reviewed. I was concerned there might be an absence of desire on the part of the Minister to continue with this project. Unfortunately, I have been proven correct. In the question I tabled, I asked the Minister whether he was committed to continuing with this project to the end and he indicated in his reply that he proposed, in view of the progress made, to pause the statute law revision programme at this time in order that his Department could progress other priorities. That is an extremely short-sighted response by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. In light of the enormous work that has been done on this project and the fact that we have finished 80% of it, the logical thing to do is to complete the project, but it appears that is not what will happen.

The are other reasons that this is necessary. The Minister of State spoke about how this project cuts through red tape and improves competition, which it does. It also provides certainty for individuals. It allows companies that want to invest in Ireland to know what are the laws of this land in a clear and concise way. We must also recognise that we are now in a situation where we could be the only common law country left in the European Union, common law meaning our laws built up over the years. The difficulty is that we will find ourselves in a situation where the statute law revision project, which involves the cleaning up all our Acts, is now being stalled. That puts a huge question mark over the integrity of the statutes we have on our Statute Book. There is still spring cleaning to be done. We should not be stopping it now, rather we should be proceeding with it.

The cost of this project when we think of the work that is being done has been very cost efficient. I do not know how much it would cost to finish this project. I suspect it would probably cost the salary of two or three researchers working for a year or so - perhaps in the region of €100,000. I appeal, therefore, to the Minister of State to take on board that we need to continue with this statute law revision project. It is pointless for us now to make a decision to stop it just when all the good work has been done. A small amount of work remains to be done and I urge the Government to continue with it.

We also know that the Law Reform Commission has been examining the consolidation, codification and simplification of legislation since 2014 and is due to publish a paper on that project shortly. That cannot be done in any effective way unless we have gone through all our legislation to make sure all the obsolete and unnecessary laws have been reduced. I ask the Minister of State and the Government to reverse the decision that appears to have been made. It is pointless now to stop this great project when we are near the end of it. We should continue with the project so that we can have it fully completed, and as, Deputy Calleary said, it is necessary that we keep doing this on an ongoing basis.

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