Members would be advised to bear in mind that in the civil law systems in Europe, there is a hierarchy of legal rights and obligations in the majority of cases. Under the civil law system, the constitution comes first, then international treaty and then domestic law. That is not the case under our system because this is a common law state and our system is different. At the top comes the Constitution, then the Oireachtas and its legislation and finally international agreements in so far as they are made part of our law by the Oireachtas. We have a different fundamental philosophy of where international treaty obligations come on the pyramid of the legal hierarchy. It is expressly provided in our Constitution that no international agreement is part of our domestic law save to the extent determined by the Oireachtas, which must act in accordance with the Constitution.