Brendan Ryan (Labour)

As the Minister of State said, this is the nub of the argument. He is not going to agree to this, which is a great pity, but I will deal with some of his arguments. What is singularly unimpressive is neither the goodwill of the Minister of State today, nor that of the Minister yesterday, but the fact that the arguments which are far from convincing are being drawn up to justify a position.

One of these is the idea that we cannot incorporate a convention into Irish law. How many European directives do we incorporate into Irish law every week? I have never figured out the logic behind that. Some directives are incorporated via primary legislation while many others are not even incorporated via primary or secondary legislation. I have seen numerous documents go through this House which have incorporated various bits of international conventions and given them effect in Irish law.

In the first referendum on the Constitution, the amendment, which essentially wiped out any conflict between the Constitution and European commitments, stated that nothing in the Constitution can be interpreted to prevent the State from fulfilling its obligations under the European treaties. The people decided to amend the Constitution in that way but it was quite an extraordinary change to the Constitution. It is a bit rich to come into the House having made that amendment in respect of our membership of the European Union and to state that we cannot incorporate international law into our domestic law. We have been doing that for 30 years via the European Union.