Dan Boyle (Green Party)

The Bill is based on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. International commercial arbitration should provide confidence that there is an accepted international standard and a place for such disputes to be settled. It is hoped this area of national law will be further improved. I welcome the Bill as it will help Ireland's position as an international trading nation.

This Second Stage debate offers an opportunity to refer to wider issues such as the moral dimension of international trade. Ireland benefits from international trade. We should be aware that how we trade and with whom we trade and to what extent we benefit from such trade needs to be subject to other standards as well, such as working conditions, pay levels and environmental standards in other countries. As Senator Bacik has pointed out, we must be aware of consumer rights and protections in the various jurisdictions. This is not the subject of this Bill but it is an important point which may be an area for arbitration, such as the failure of contracts in commercial transactions resulting from the application of this new law and from the application and the existence of such standards.

Ireland, in its foreign policy, tries to promote better standards in many of these areas and we could help inform the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law so that it would adopt many of these principles and make them issues on which arbitration will be applied in the future. Other international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation seem to be almost amoral in how they approach many of these ethical issues relating to trade.

I note the general welcome given to the Bill, not only by Members but by trading bodies, various commercial ventures and the accounting profession. This indicates that this subject does not cause dissent. I suspect there will be a wider debate on Committee and Report Stages as to how the Bill might be nuanced, but in its general principles there seems to be near unanimity that this is valuable and necessary legislation which will be of benefit to the country. I offer my party's support for the Bill and I look forward to its speedy progress through the House and its eventual enactment.