Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The money has to be borrowed somewhere as well as the contributions that we are making, as I understand it. If I fail to understand this, the Minister of State can imagine how difficult it is for me to explain it to the ordinary person on the ground, and I have taken the trouble of reading it. Perhaps if we had pre-legislative scrutiny all of this could have been teased out. I do my best to earn the money that I earn and I read all of this material to try to understand it. What we are doing here is retrospectively legalising something. Again, if I am wrong and the Minister of State has a particular background in this better than mine, she might be able to confirm that I am wrong, but retrospectively we are giving a legal basis to what has already been done. I know there is a decision and a regulation from Europe and regulations become immediately enforceable. Have we given money already on a non-legal basis?

Now, retrospectively, we are legalising it, although we are changing the rules from 2023 onwards to do something differently. Yet, lately, when we spoke about a windfall tax, retrospection was allowed only for a short period of three months, or six months maximum. The financial experts told us we could not have retrospection as far back as when prices were at their peak. Does the Minister of State remember that?

See this speech in context