Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his office for their engagement and for the detailed email response to many of the amendments, which has been helpful. When he indicated the definition would be detrimental, is that purely because it would be out of line with that in the sectoral legislation? In the context of what is the best possible definition of a student union, if making it out of line with that in the sectoral legislation is the only issue, there is no reason that, through legislation, we could not conduct keyhole surgery on other legislation to apply the new definition to earlier Acts. If the definition in the amendment is better than what is in the sectoral legislation, we could still use this legislation to amend the definitions in earlier legislation. Is this definition more accurate in regard to how student unions should be defined or are we pinning ourselves to old definitions just because they are not included in the Bill? If the latter, that does not mean we cannot define them through this Bill.