Brendan Ryan (Labour)

As I expected, the Minister of State did not even condescend to mention whether the Attorney General had at least advised that this was constitutional. Maybe he did not so advise. The Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel makes mistakes regularly. I am tired of pointing out, and seeing Ministers have to accept, mistakes in legislation which obviously missed the eagle eye of the Parliamentary Counsel.

This is unconstitutional. The Minister of State is one of the nicest people in the Houses and I get on very well with him but the implications of what he has said are quite sinister. He says that he wants to deal with these matters efficiently and the Houses of the Oireachtas get in the way so he will bypass them. That is exactly what he said: democracy is inefficient; therefore we will bypass democracy. I may not be in the House by the time this comes to the Supreme Court but when it does it will be ruled unconstitutional.

Ministers cannot be given the power to rule by decree. In the past they have attempted to introduce major changes by decree. It is no excuse to say that this is European legislation. This country is gravely deficient in ways of dealing with such matters. This means that the Minister can introduce fines of up to €500,000 for individuals, leaving the corporate sector aside. Individuals do not have turnovers of €1 billion but they will pay large fines.

I do not propose to spend any longer on this matter. We have spent enough time fighting this morning. The Government is wrong on this issue. The advice is wrong and this is unconstitutional and will be so ruled when the Minister finally tries to punish somebody for outrageous behaviour. The case will go all the way to the Supreme Court where the Government will lose and fall flat on its face, as has been the experience of ComReg repeatedly in dealing with the telecommunications sector.

The Minister of State should put this into primary legislation. We will facilitate the Government if it is in a hurry. When it was in a real hurry last night it was well able to drive legislation through the Houses in no time. The reason for this provision is that scrutiny by the Oireachtas is a nuisance and a drag and every excuse is found to avoid it.