Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The legislation on Brexit will the most important, complex and technical to come before the Dáil for quite a number of years. The only more significant legislation I can recall in recent history is the ill-fated bank guarantee and the NAMA legislation. When we are talking about very complex legislation, if we fail to have adequate scrutiny and understanding of it, we often end up with bad outcomes that we spend many years seeking to redress as all the information resides with Government for obvious reasons. Has the Taoiseach considered whether individual Deputies, parties or spokespeople should have additional resources, specifically in terms of legal resources? Second, in the analysis supporting the Bill, it is very important that we understand the relationship of the proposed legislation to the Belfast Agreement.

In terms of the future of the island, it is absolutely important that we both protect the Belfast Agreement and that we have a clear understanding of what we are doing legally, but from talking to lawyers, there seems to be a wide swathe of difference in what we are doing. Has the Taoiseach given any thought to how to address this?

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