Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator is correct to fear the wording and I appreciate her recognition of that.

We have come back to this matter a couple of times in the debate. If one were an outsider looking in, one might think this is the one thing we are going to do on plastics and then we are going away somewhere for a while but we are only beginning this journey. There will be ample opportunities to use either other legislative vehicles to make amendments here that might be necessary in the future or even use regulations to make changes that need to be made if that relates to exemptions.

Sunset clauses are quite popular in other parliamentary systems. What I do not like is that they interfere with the power of the Minister to revoke something early, potentially, or if they wanted to have a phase-out period in line with a new regulation coming in say, for example, a single plastic use regulation or an EU REACH regulation, they would not have the power to do that or it would be a bit more cumbersome to get it done. The power to revoke is a lot stronger than having an automatic sunset clause in this instance. That is why, notwithstanding the fact that the language might have been crafted a bit more differently, it is difficult to accept the amendment.