James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Ward for the amendments that he has tabled. I agree with the principle and intention behind them. As someone who has practised as a barrister for 14 years, I know the difficulty for ordinary citizens and for practitioners in trying to establish exactly what amendments have been made and where. It impacts on accessibility. When that is compounded with the sister to accessibility, which is the need for greater use of plain language, then we need consolidated Acts and plain language. This is, unfortunately, reflected across every Department. As Senator Bacik has pointed out, this is before we get into miscellaneous provisions Bills. One or two will be brought forward from the Department of Justice in the next year or two for those matters which really need to be addressed, but there is no question that they add to the greater complexity of accessibility.

It goes without saying that Bills of this nature are difficult to read and they have many short, and in some cases very consequential, amendments that only become clear when read in context. When added to that is the task of seeing what is in the fifth directive and how that amended the fourth directive, the whole process becomes even slower. The challenge in creating a consolidated Act is that it takes a long time. We have to make sure that every single comma and bracket is correct, because if we want to change the consolidated Act, having made a mistake, it will require amending legislation. The Government needs to look at how we will address these many amendments in future. Compared with 20, 30 or 40 years ago, the Legislature is passing much more legislation, which is compounding this issue.

The difficulty with the approach taken is that, on a practical level, I am not sure that anyone looking at the amendments without being aware of the context would be able to tell what was going on or, more to the point, what has actually changed, which might create another separate problem. When we consider the changes introduced by the amending Bill and making them comprehensible, we need to see what is changing, what the changes mean for the principal Act in context, and what the end result will be.An even more complex process is probably needed. This would not only consolidate matters but would allow one to see what changes are being made. This is something at which the Department and the Government need to look with a view to future amendments. A body of work needs to be done in that regard.

I would like to see at least some Bills incorporate a version of the principal Act with the changes tracked. This would clearly show what was being amended in the existing text. It is not straightforward but it should be achievable. Officials are working on this at the moment. I believe the plan is to see if the system used by the Law Reform Commission to create revised Acts could be used at earlier stages as Bills are brought through. That would be very useful. When a Bill is brought before the House for debate, a document tracking any changes or amendments would be presented along with it. This might be in the form of an attachment to the Bill or some other format. It would make it easier for legislators to see what is being proposed, what amendments do and what effects they would have in real life. The Department of Justice is talking to the Law Reform Commission about its system and about whether it could be incorporated into the Department's system for future legislation. That would be very useful for these debates.