Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I have some sympathy with the argument on the use of secondary legislation. However, the Supreme Court primarily found fault with the making of legislation, as such, by means of secondary legislation because in some Departments there was a practice whereby Acts were changed by secondary legislation rather than by having to go through the rigours of primary legislation.

This legislation itself is ground-breaking and fairly complicated, especially in regard to the change from punts, or Irish pounds, into euro, as witnessed by the fact that we are going back as far as 1914 in respect of the indexing or upgrading of fines. There may be mistakes or difficulties that will occur in the initial stages of the legislation but we are being careful in that there is a three-year limit to how it will operate.

Senator Regan is right concerning the last dealing of this. We gave the example that it was not a unique or once-off provision but has been used in other legislation, primarily in section 5 of the British-Irish Agreement of 1999 which stated that if within three years of the coming into operation of Part II any difficulty were to arise in bringing a provision into operation or concerning the operation of such provision, the Minister may propose regulations that may remove these difficulties so the provision might be brought into operation.

The words the amendment seeks to delete would also allow the regulations to modify any provision to facilitate its coming into effect. The word "modify" is not defined but the ordinary dictionary definition means to moderate, meaning to keep within measure or bounds. It most certainly does not mean to change substantially, which is something the courts would not allow. It is simply facilitating the coming into effect of what is already legislation.

I can understand the reluctance with regard to secondary legislation but this is genuinely made to cater for a position if an anomaly arises in the implementation of this legislation. It could be dealt with easily rather than having to come back for primary legislation. It is not endeavouring to change legislation dramatically.