Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I believe our opposition to the section is the most important proposal today, precisely because the section gives a blank cheque and carte blancheto the Minister, under the emergency amendment of the Health Act that was passed earlier this year, to make regulations which potentially go way beyond the specific scope of this Bill. We would be happy to let this Bill go through because we accept that it is necessary to have powers to prevent reckless behaviour in the context of licensed premises or places selling intoxicating liquor, which is a real threat to public health. However, the Government and everybody else accept that these are draconian powers. They are not powers that under normal circumstances one would wish the State or the Garda to have. All of us have accepted that this is an exceptional situation and have allowed power to be given to the State to do things that normally from a civil liberties point of view we would be very concerned about. We can accept that. This is exceptional and those powers need to be available, when they are clearly specified in respect of what the offence is and what the penalty is.

This section means that the Minister for Health can prescribe as a criminal offence things that are not in this Bill or that are not written down anywhere else so far. That is a power too far. It is worrying. Ministers can make mistakes and wrong moves. There needs to be oversight of decisions that the Minister may make in future which we might want to question in here. We will not have the right to question or challenge them. The Minister will have a blank cheque for things that are not to do with the stated intention of this Bill or that the Government may not even have considered at this moment. That is more than unusual. For that reason, we appeal to the Government to remove this section. We would then be happy to let the Bill go through. This section should come out. It is a blank cheque and no Government or Minister should be given a blank cheque about things they could do in the future that we may not even have thought of or considered.

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