Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I wish to dwell on a number of points that I am anxious to have clarified in the course of this debate. This is a transposition measure in the main and I share the disquiet expressed by Senator Davitt that it took so long to transpose the relevant directive into Irish law.

The point I want to make above all is that in 2014, we enacted the Companies Act which was supposed to be "the" Act. It was supposed to be kept up to date and to be a one-stop shop for somebody reading it. As far as I can see, on reading the text of this Bill, it respects that principle. All of the amendments are textual amendments to, or insertions into, the main Act. It should be possible to have it in a form which is readable as one continuous document. That was the whole purpose of the Company Law Review Group and of the 2014 Act, which took so long to get on the Statute Book. In that context, I ask the Minister to clarify whether it is proposed to publish the amendments made by this Bill to the 2014 Act as a single, coherent text.Will it be available between two covers for consultation or are we going back to where one must go hunting among a series of documents to find out what the law is? In that context, I am conscious of the fact that while I was Attorney General, the idea of the statute law restatement route of having one simple revised statute in available form incorporating subsequent amendments was advanced. I ask the Minister to indicate if she proposes to avail of the statute law revision method, which is now laid down in law, to produce one authoritative text or if, on the contrary, she proposes to simply have an informal, non-statutory consolidated text available.

I notice from my practise in law that it is now becoming quite common for Departments to keep their own consolidated legislation and it is very useful for practitioners because the State's Department usually hands it over in the context of presenting the case to simplify the case to a judge. It would be a terrible pity if we went back to having multi-sourced company law legislation. Whether we employ the statute law revision route or some less formal system, I hope there can be an absolute guarantee that there will be one single text available for everybody doing business in Ireland, for students learning company law, for accountants looking up company law, for lawyers practising company law, for directors carrying out their businesses in accordance with company law, and that there would be one bible available without having to search through various subsections of later Bills to see what amendments were made to an earlier Bill. That is of crucial importance. I ask the Minister to clarify what her intentions are in that respect.