Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to stress that this legislation has been sponsored at all stages by the Minister, Deputy Donohoe. In the last Oireachtas, it was he who liaised with the joint committee and even though the Minister asked for time for legislative scrutiny, it decided not to do so. Only a few weeks ago, on 1 September, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, wrote to the Ceann Comhairle seeking pre-legislative scrutiny. There was an intention to start it in the Dáil but it so happened to start in the Seanad. The Minister wrote:

The proposed legislative changes to the Investment Limited Partnership structure will provide a more flexible regime for investors wishing to use a partnership structure for regulated investment funds, to make Ireland more attractive to international investors and to grow the private equity funds sector. The Bill provides for Investment Limited Partnerships to migrate in and out of Ireland, subject to authorisation by the Central Bank of Ireland. In addition, there are some amendments to the ICAV Act 2015.

Information on the various changes are enclosed in the draft legislation prepared by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.

The people who drafted the legislation are in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. It was not done outside. We do not outsource. If the office is particularly busy, we can outsource work under its control to people it identifies but the office itself prepared this Bill. The Minister concluded:

I have also included a copy of the Regulatory Impact Assessment for your information. If beneficial, my officials are available to meet with members of the Committee to brief them in more detail on the proposed amendments. I would be grateful, therefore, if the Committee could notify me as to when the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft legislation could be accommodated.

It was an all-party committee and it decided to waive the requirement for pre-legislative scrutiny and wrote to the Minister of Finance accordingly. The Minister overseeing the legislation through the entire process is Deputy Donohoe and it was written by the Office of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. Those are the facts, I cannot change them.

The purpose of section 5 is to replace "custodian" with "depository" in the 1994 Act, to update the terminology in line with European legislation and to align it with other domestic legislation funds, the EU having been consulted on the legislation.