Michael Ahern (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

The second amendment to this section proposes the inclusion of a new subsection (4) on commencement provisions and suggests, in effect, that the Act should not come into effect until such time as the public lending remuneration scheme is in place. It is, however, crucial that this legislation comes into effect upon enactment. As was made clear from the European Court of Justice decision against the State in January of this year, Ireland is in default of its obligations under the EU directive on rental and lending and it is incumbent on us to comply with the decision as soon as possible. In this regard, our immediate obligation is to provide an exclusive lending right for authors, and this exclusive right will be replaced by a right to remuneration upon the introduction of the public lending remuneration scheme. It is not possible to await that development, given our immediate obligation to authors. For this reason, I cannot accept the amendment. However, I give a commitment to the House that the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is working towards drafting the regulations to be made under this legislation before the end of the year and that the scheme itself will be in operation from 2009.