Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wanted to raise last Friday's Supreme Court judgment on CETA. I commend Deputy Costello for taking that case despite the fact that the Tánaiste had threatened to pursue legal costs had the Deputy lost. It is interesting that in the last couple of days we have seen the arrogance of both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste who were out of the traps very quickly to say that it would be a simple fix: just amend the Arbitration Act 2010 but their gallop seems to have slowed. Those who were at the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting will have heard how much more complicated it is to amend the Arbitration Act 2010 because that may involve renegotiating parts of CETA with other member states.

That the deal was found to be unconstitutional is a very welcome decision. It shows how reckless the Government was in trying to rush this, with the advice of the Attorney General, it has to be said, in a 55-minute debate in the Dáil in December 2021. It also has echoes of how we got ourselves tied up in the Energy Charter Treaty in 1994. Again, that was a rushed debate. It was done by a caretaker Government. The Energy Charter Treaty has put billions of euro of public money on the hook to be paid to fossil fuel companies. Even the mere threat of investor-state dispute settlement, ISDS, and investor courts has led to governments changing position. In Ireland, the smoky coal ban was delayed when we were threatened with tribunals and there was a threat from the Corrib gas field against the Government. That was not public but one can find it on investor websites.

EU countries are leaving the Energy Charter Treaty every single week. The most recent are France and Germany. At a time countries are trying to remove themselves from arbitration and investor courts, it is absolutely bizarre that this Government is trying to get us tied up in even more of them. We will see how complicated it is to try to amend the Arbitration Act 2010.