Thomas Byrne
Meath East · Fianna Fáil · Ireland
“We are very proud of the work they do in what are often very dangerous circumstances. Let us be 100% clear: our troops will only ever do peacekeeping, peace enforcement or conflict prevention in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter and, of course, as with every action of this Government, in accordance with the Constitution.”
“To be clear on what our troops will be doing, they will be doing peacekeeping, peace enforcement and conflict prevention. That is what the law says; not what the Deputy imagines it to be. We are bound by our Constitution and international law. The legislation changes nothing in that regard.”
“We are bound by international law. We are bound by international law since our Constitution came into force and we continue to be bound by international law and always will be, no matter what happens to this legislation. International law governs what we do as a Government.”
“I propose to take Questions Nos. 125, 140, 157 and 185 together. I am taking this question on behalf of the Minister. A commitment to reform what is known as the triple lock was set out in the programme for Government.”
“-----in accordance with UN principles and, of course, in accordance with our own Constitution, which commits us to peace and friendly relations among nations. The triple lock is a statutory mechanism.”
“Switzerland, the classical neutral country that is not even a member of the European Union and will never join the European Union, it is so neutral and independent, accepts UN, EU and OSCE mandates. I understand the situation is similar in Austria, which is another neutral country. By the way, it is also similar in Germany.”
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“We have had changes, which apply in every single case and cannot be opted out of by the parties, in relation to the consistency and predictability of investor court decisions, the independence and impartiality of members of the tribunals, transparency and, substantively, as I have explained, the State's right to regulate. All those protections have been built into the investor courts system and they cannot be opted out of unless the State agrees to do so, and, presumably, the State would not agree to do so.”
“There is not a workaround of the new system. The Senator has acknowledged that it is a new system and that there are protections and changes made. We have been clear that this Bill is putting in place a framework based on the new model, which is the basis of all the modern EU trade agreements that have investment protection dispute resolution commitments in them. It is the Government's clear position that this Bill and its order-making power will only apply to the approach in CETA and other similar agreements. We have been very clear that the attributes of the arbitration system present in CETA are what this Bill will apply.”
“To overcome those concerns, reforms have been put into the new system of investor courts. As the CETA joint interpretative instrument states about the new system, "CETA represents an important and radical change in investment rules and dispute resolution." Putting forward in the Seanad that, somehow, there is a way around that is just not correct. It is simply factually incorrect.”
“It is not an ICSID tribunal, for a start. All of the rules around the right to regulate, the right for the state to do what it wishes in relation to public services, housing and all the public good that a state does, are not in any way impacted by this. This is not a return to the old system. It is simply about applying rules within the new system. Everything else we discussed applies within the new, reformed system of the investor courts. It is factually wrong to state that investors have a choice to go to the old system. That is not the case under the treaty. I am happy to provide this clarification, but we really need to knock this on the head. Many comparisons have been raised between the old system and the new system. Part of the reason these changes were made was because of concerns raised about the old system.”
“This article therefore specifies which procedural rules can be applied by the CETA tribunal and offers choices in this regard, but it is not the case that these cases are going through the old system or that the protections that have been brought in for the old system are somehow gone at the choice of an investor suing the state. That is absolutely not the case and the information the Senator has given the House is not correct.”
“What the Senator is saying mixes up two things. Insofar as she is arguing that an investor could bring a claim to the ISDS system instead of the CETA tribunal, this would only be possible subject to the relevant consent requirements, that is, that the parties to the dispute consent to submit to an ISDS mechanism. We would have to consent to that. Let me be 100% clear on that. Regarding Article 8.23 of CETA, what the Senator said is not correct as regards the reference to the ICSID and the UNCITRAL rules in Article 8.23. It is not correct to say that those rules allow investors to go the mechanisms to which she referred. Article 8.23 provides for rules to be applied by the CETA tribunal, subject to the rules in section F and supplemented by relevant rules adopted by the committee on services and investment.”
“We are committed to ensuring the State is equipped to counter-threats posed by drones, through a combination of investment in domestic capability and through international partnerships if it is appropriate. An Garda Síochána is responsible for this. It has counter-drone capacity in place in terms of both detection and mitigation. The Garda continues to build capacity. Additional funding has been given by the Government for this as well. The Defence Forces have an important role to play and they are also making significant investments in this.”
“The Deputy is certainly not wrong. I agree with him. There is huge potential for people to be influenced in an unwitting way in most cases. The test that I always try and put forward is what is in the best interest of this country, not what is in the best interest of a particular ideology. Counter-drone capability will be very important for events during the Presidency. As the Deputy said, the airport was closed in Denmark during some of their major meetings because of drone activity. Lithuania takes the Presidency after us. Its airports have been closed on occasion because of balloons coming in from Belarus. The question is not whether this would happen, but how we deal with it when something does happen, whether that is drones or hybrid activity.”
“Work is under way, led by the Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration in planning the security and policing requirements. That includes liaising continuously with policing and security partners across the European Union.”
“The Government is committed to delivering a successful Presidency. We continue to engage closely with EU partners and An Garda Síochána as the preparations accelerate. The scale and significance of Presidency events that are planned to take place in Ireland mean that unprecedented security considerations arise, certainly for the European political community meeting. That will be the largest ever meeting of its type in Ireland. The security arrangements that will be put in place will reflect the wider backdrop of a changed EU security landscape and a more complex threat environment. When we look back to the Presidency of 2004, while I will not say there was a level of informality, the security considerations were nowhere near what they are now. We will see a difference.”
“In that context, we welcomed the UK minister, noting the common challenges we face across Europe in tackling threats against the stability, social cohesion and democratic nature of our countries. We exchange best practice. We focus on how to strengthen co-operation, co-ordinate international efforts and build resilience, including through the European Democracy Shield and the European Centre for Democratic Resilience. We underlined the need to strengthen co-ordination in multilateral forums and to enhance resilience in the digital space. Responding to hybrid threats and activity is a priority for the Government and for EU partners. During our Presidency, we will work to help the EU in navigating our complex and evolving threat environment and we will work to progress the EU agenda on countering hybrid threats.”
“Our national counter disinformation strategy sets out commitments and actions to help counter this complex problem. At the EU General Affairs Council informal meeting in Cyrus on 11 May we discussed all these issues. At the meeting, EU ministers were joined by the UK Minister for the Constitution and EU Relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, MP, which I welcome, for an exchange on efforts to tackle foreign information manipulation and interference. The participation of the UK minister is a recognition of the importance of engaging with close partners on the issue. At the discussions in the informal meeting we focused on EU-UK co-operation on countering FIMI, and we reaffirmed that this is a shared and evolving threat, which requires a coordinated European response.”
“I attended the informal General Affairs Council in Lefkosi, Nicosia, in Cyprus on 11 May. Hybrid threats, of course, including foreign information manipulation and interference, FIMI, represent a serious political and security challenge for the EU and our partners. Ireland continues to work together with our EU counterparts to counter such activities. The work includes implementation of the EU’s hybrid, cyber and foreign information manipulation and interference toolboxes. Together, these provide a range of measures, which enable us to identify, deter, mitigate and respond to disinformation and interference campaigns, including through the imposition of restrictive measures where appropriate. Disinformation, more broadly, is a serious challenge, which must be met with a whole-of-society response.”
“These examples that keep getting thrown out here in the Dáil are getting more and more extreme. The facts do not bear out what the Deputy is saying. The Deputy and the opponents of this treaty simply refuse to read the actual text of the agreement and the interpretative instrument.”
“The idea that we would have to pay off X to protect the children of this country is simply the latest scare story about CETA. It is unbecoming of the debate to start going into this. By stating that, Deputy Gibney has completely ignored the terms of CETA, the joint interpretative instrument and the fact that there are no precedents for this investor court system she can rely on because it is not in existence yet. The safeguards are in place. The agreement is there to enhance our economies, and it has done that. If we take the route the Deputy is suggesting, the entire agreement between the EU, its member states and Canada would collapse. That is simply a fact. The Deputy cannot say we can retain the benefits without having the overall agreement because that is not factually correct.”
“There is no imposition on the State's right to regulate, as I have extensively explained to the House during this legislative process. If we do not ratify this or make a decision not to ratify this, as the Government's regulatory impact analysis says, it would collapse the entire agreement.”
“In relation to farmers, citizens and consumers, they are the ultimate beneficiaries of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. They benefit. We are not selling out; we are buying and selling goods and services. This is mutually beneficial. CETA is not a threat to our sovereignty. Every time an agreement is reached with another entity or country within the EU, there is a sharing of sovereignty in order to get bigger benefits for all of our citizens. I do not accept that the legislation is being rushed through. The Bill is just over two pages long. There has been extensive debate and there continues to be extensive debate about it. I absolutely reject this notion we are selling out the country. This type of language about a trade agreement is damaging to politics. It is not the case.”
“The Government is currently progressing the Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025 through the Oireachtas as part of ongoing efforts to take forward ratification of CETA. The Bill, which amends the Arbitration Act 2010 to deal with concerns addressed in the Costello case, is currently before the Seanad.”
“In relation to the termination clause the Deputy referred to, we have collectively agreed, through the democratic process at EU level, to have a trade and investment agreement with our ally, Canada. It makes absolute sense that it would involve a collective decision of the EU to terminate it. I cannot envisage circumstances in which the EU and Canada would want to end this agreement. In the case of Ireland alone, we have seen bilateral trade in goods and services increase from €3.2 billion in 2016 to more than €12 billion in 2024. This significant increase in bilateral trade between Ireland and Canada supports thousands of Irish jobs and benefits large and small Irish businesses throughout our country.”
“CETA took seven years to negotiate and the deal that was agreed at the Council of the European Union followed extensive engagement and debate among EU member states. It is now close to ten years since the agreement was signed, with the European Parliament giving its consent a number of months later. The EU's new approach to investment protection includes the investor court system, which will replace the old, long-standing investor state dispute settlement, or ISDS, mechanism. The EU and all of us are keenly aware of the criticisms of the old system. To overcome those shortcomings, the EU and its member states have put forward new reforms which address the concerns head-on. The new, progressive system contains investment protection provisions that are very much balanced against the State's right to regulate in the public interest.”
“I will answer this question on behalf of the Minister. The ratification of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, between Canada and the EU is an absolute priority for the Government. The 2025 programme for Government contains a specific commitment to ratify this important free trade agreement and the Government is committed to delivering on it. The ratification of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is an important part of Ireland’s diversification strategy in reducing concentration risk among our trading partners. The ratification of CETA is also a key priority for Canada, which has been repeatedly raised with Ireland by Canadian partners, including with me last weekend.”
“There is another point that is very important. I stand over what I said, which is correct. It is also the case that for every agreement that will become subject to the provisions in the Arbitration (Amendment) Bill, the order that the Minister would make in relation to this would be laid before this House and the Dáil, so there would be an opportunity for this House and separately for the Dáil to reject that. There is belt and braces in relation to the concerns that the Senator raises. I think that what I am hearing from the Senator is that she acknowledges, like I do, that the newer system is better than the old system.”
“They contain this system. It is also the case that they are examples of mixed agreements, and I am right in saying that. For example, the recent Mercosur agreement would not be part of this because it does not have those provisions at all. Again, we are moving even beyond that.”
“All the modern trade agreements have this new system of investor courts, not the old system. That is what this legislation will apply to. Certainly, any of the ones that we have mentioned today, the ones that are in the Bill, are ones that may well become part of the Bill, that I am aware of now-----”
“It is important that we give a precise answer. I want to get the precise question. The question is that the Senator is envisaging an agreement that is not yet agreed, but that could potentially be subject to ministerial order under the Act.”
“The joint interpretative instrument on CETA confirms that "Canada and the European Union and its Member States are committed to using these provisions to avoid and correct any misinterpretation of CETA by Tribunals." CETA's joint interpretative instrument explains that Canada and the European Union and its member states are committed to monitoring the operation of all these investment rules, to addressing in a timely manner any shortcomings that could emerge and to exploring ways in which to continually improve their operation over time. That answers the point.”
“The investor court system provides clear guidance to the dispute resolution tribunals on applying the standards. This detail and clarity is an improvement on the old system. Many examples put before us in the Seanad have been based on the old system and that system has been changed. In order to ensure the tribunals in all circumstances respect the intent of the parties, which are the states, the EU and Canada, the agreements make provision for the issuance of binding notes of interpretation where serious concerns arise on matters of interpretation.”
“I have no difficulty in answering the Senator's queries but I have repeated myself many times - though not, I acknowledge, on this next point. Comments have been made on the provisions regarding fair and equitable treatment in CETA. It is important to stress the standard drafted under the investor court system is quite different from the old system. The fair and equitable treatment provisions under the ISDS system - the old system that is not in this treaty - were opaque and based on customary international law. There was no description of content. The new types, including in CETA, clearly lift the aspects of fair and equitable treatment. Examples of these are denials of justice, manifest arbitrariness, targeted arbitration and manifestly wrong grounds such as gender, race or religious belief.”
“I accept it is remote and not likely but those are the provisions that treaties have had in them to ensure balanced trade that benefits all our people. I am at the Senator's disposal-----”
“Yes, but that is not what the Senator said. She made out this was still in force when it is not in force. The State would not be bound by that because there would be required to be consent. I stand over what I said on Dáil Committee Stage that this is exceedingly unlikely. That is said by a number of the judges in the Supreme Court case. It does not cure any unconstitutionality or any difficulties with it, but they stated they feel it is unlikely too. We have all said the domestic courts are options as well for anybody. Those dispute resolution protections are needed not just to protect investors coming into Europe but to protect Irish companies going into Canada or wherever they are going.”
“The regulatory impact assessment clearly states the thing would collapse and we would be left with tariffs and whatever pertained before we had the CETA agreement with Canada, and that jobs around the country would be at risk. Investor courts are new and have been designed to deal with the issues raised regarding the previous system of dispute resolution. There have been many significant changes.”
“I presume if the Opposition came into government, it would announce it is not ratifying CETA. That is presumably what it would do because we are required to have legal certainty.”
“If we were to ratify CETA without making the legislative changes, we would be breaching the Constitution but the Government is confident the legislation we are passing addresses the concerns of the Supreme Court in the Costello case following the legislative path identified in that case. Therefore, a referendum is not required because it would be constitutional. A referendum is only required, in general terms, to change the Constitution. That is not required in this case. People are talking about various countries apparently not going to ratify CETA or other agreements. We have absolutely no information that that is the case. It appears to us we cannot say that definitively. Let us say we decide we will not do this through a court case saying it is unconstitutional, through a failed vote or through a decision not to do it.”
“The Supreme Court not only identified constitutional concerns preventing the ratification of CETA but also identified a path to cure those concerns. The Government, advised by the Attorney General and my officials, has carefully considered the entirety of the Supreme Court case. We cannot and have not picked and chosen. We have also looked at Mr. Justice Charleton's dissent. The legislation is in response and we are confident it addresses the concerns of the majority of the Supreme Court in the Costello case and follows the legislative path identified. Nobody has said a referendum is required. Contrary to what many people have said, it was not a decision of the Supreme Court that a referendum was required.”
“It is worthy from an academic point of view but the Government cannot say it prefers the dissent and will ignore the majority, as some people in the Opposition want to do. That is not open to us because that is not the law. The dissent is not the law. We have to go with what we believe to be constitutional. The majority of the Supreme Court did not agree with Mr. Justice Charleton; the majority agreed with what Mr. Justice Hogan had said. The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice O'Donnell, considered - contrary to what Senator McDowell has told us at length - in writing what Mr. Justice Charleton said and explained his reasons for disagreeing with it. There was a good debate among Supreme Court judges and, out of that debate, we get a majority position that the Government is using to bring this legislation through on a constitutional path.”
“Like every piece of legislation that comes out of the Oireachtas, it is subject to constitutional provisions for legislation. It will have to measure up to the standards set out in our Constitution and that is the work we have tried to do, recognising the Costello case and what the Supreme Court has said. We have tried to do this and the Attorney General has tried to do this. We have not tried to be reckless or dystopian. We are not trying, as one Senator said in the last debate, to bring the country down the Swanee. That is what we were told we were trying to do. The facts are completely opposed to that. I will be clear in relation to Mr. Justice Charleton. I have to say I have never seen the Supreme Court so personalised in all my life. We need to look at the judgment on the overall basis.”
“The Attorney General advises us on that, sees a Supreme Court decision and says, "Well, the Supreme Court has declared the ratification to be unconstitutional but a majority of the Supreme Court has said that it could be ratified if you do this". Mr. Justice Gerard Hogan was clear this is a matter for Government and the Legislature; it is not a matter for the Supreme Court. We have never said we are bound by the Supreme Court; we are doing this because we want to do it and think it is in the best interests of the people of this country and of our economies. We believe this is very important. We are passing this legislation. It is a pathway. There is not a ratio decidendi or an obiter dictum . That is not relevant to us. What is relevant to us is the suggestion of a pathway by the Supreme Court.”
“For all this talk about obiter dicta , this is not a High Court bound by precedent; this is a Legislature making laws which the Supreme Court envisages. Nobody in the Attorney General's office could simply say this is worthless or not worth the paper it is written on. The Attorney General is not a High Court judge deciding a case; the Attorney General is giving advice to the Government, which wishes - for public policy reasons, for the betterment of our economy and for the prosperity of our country, the European Union and Canada - to implement and ratify this treaty. We see the benefits to it and they have been well analysed.”
“As regards some of the points Senator McDowell raised, first, he mentioned the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It reminds me of the Vienna Convention on diplomacy, which is relevant to a point made earlier by Senator Higgins, who suggested that the Villa Spada might be at risk. That is not the case. It could not possibly be the case. Senator McDowell also urged anybody here to contradict Mr. Justice Charleton. Mr. Justice Charleton was in the minority of the Supreme Court, so the majority clearly by default did contradict him.”
“People who continue to make this case are really not looking at the text of the agreement, the text of the interpretative statement or the other provisions that relate to this. I also object to something else. I will not say it. I will say it later, maybe. There was another point I was going to object to but I think I have raised most of the legal points. There may be other questions. People accuse us of wanting to guillotine this legislation. I got to speak after two hours. I am happy to listen to every section of this and go through it but there is a happy medium between filibuster and guillotine. I think we can all agree where that happy medium lies, in my opinion. I am not accusing anyone of filibustering so far.”
“As mentioned previously, this is a very different system that took the concerns about the old system to heart. Concerns were listened to in relation to this and the negotiators and the State did their best to alleviate those concerns. The concerns were listened to about the right to regulate. Every t was crossed and every i was dotted. It is in every agreement, the interpretative statement and the instructions to any potential investor courts. Again, Senator McDowell, who is totally opposed to this Bill, agrees that is not true. I think Senator McDowell comes from the point of view of sovereignty but not the point of view of the right to regulate being at risk. We say that it is not at risk and it simply could not be clearer.”
“Under the new ICS, which is in the CETA agreement and the other agreements we talked about and which this Bill would enable us to ratify, significant and targeted improvements have been introduced to address the concerns that have been raised in relation to the long-term system - some of which Opposition Senators have quoted from today - and to improve on that. The intention of the new system, which is part of CETA - which we have had no decisions from yet, by the way, because CETA has not been ratified - is to learn from the shortcomings of the ad hoc ISDS system and introduce a new and improved approach. Cases decided under the old system, therefore, do not provide an accurate indication of how the new system would work and how cases under this system would be decided and enforced.”
“Senators have raised previous cases. I cannot comment on NAFTA cases as we were not party to that treaty but they have raised cases under the long-standing investor-state dispute settlement system, which was common enough in the older agreements. There have been no cases actually decided to date. We have had no judgments against us under the old system and there have been none decided under the new system, which is what we are talking about here - the investor court system. The cases that have been referenced and cited previously were part of the old, long-standing system of investor-state dispute settlement.”
“The Opposition, which is opposed to this legislation, says today it is in favour of all the benefits of the trade agreement but it never said this back in 2016 or 2017 when those benefits were not apparent. We came in and said this is good for us because it will create jobs and opportunities in this country. That has happened - more than we ever imagined. It involves, at international level, negotiation of agreements. As Senator McDowell has rightly said, certainly in the EU there is a sharing of sovereignty. Any time you make an agreement with another international entity, a country or whatever, you are in some way sharing your sovereignty but that then gives us huge benefits. Those benefits are now taken for granted but the very strong point I am making is I do not believe we can take these benefits for granted.”
“What would be the costs if we did not ratify this or if we rejected CETA? As the regulatory impact analysis assessment of the Department said, this option - rejection of the agreement - has the potential to cause the collapse of the agreement in its entirety. If Ireland or any EU member state did not satisfy CETA, it would be a first for an EU trade agreement. Given that such a step would be unprecedented, it is not clear what would follow in terms of the level of legal and reputational cost for Ireland and the EU, though it is likely to be significant. It is also not possible to anticipate Canada's willingness to renegotiate only particular elements of such a comprehensive agreement. We make the case very strongly for CETA and the benefits of trade agreements.”
“First of all, we only get the benefits of these trade agreements - and there are so many of them that have been hugely beneficial to Ireland, probably disproportionately so - because when they are ratified, they become necessitated obligations of the European Union. There are European Union trade negotiators who, on behalf of all member states, negotiate trade agreements on our behalf. We get huge benefits from those trade agreements and as a small, sovereign independent state not connected to the European Union, I think we would have great difficulties in negotiating trade agreements with individual member states in terms of the time it would take and whether other states would want to do trade agreements with small countries. The benefits to this country of the European Union having trade competence are hugely important.”
“It is not open for us to say it is mistaken or just advising on proofs, as Senator McDowell has said. We have a policy objective to ratify CETA and the only way we can do it is to, first of all, pass this legislation and then, in accordance with our Constitution - and I mean no disrespect to the Seanad - we have a vote in the Dáil. That is the only way we can do it. We wish to do it as a matter of policy. Execution of the award, as I have said before, is a matter under national law. That is the reality. The point has been made time and time again that we do not need to do this because it is in force. People are just coasting over the benefits of this trade agreement as if they are automatic.”
“An argument has been raised that when CETA is fully ratified, the enforcement of awards becomes a necessitated obligation of EU membership - and large parts of the Opposition consistently voted against us having necessitated obligations, but they have been hugely beneficial to our economy and society - and, therefore, any constitutional discretion would vanish. As stated, the Supreme Court not only identified constitutional concerns which prevented the ratification of CETA as Irish law then stood, but the majority, as I have said, identified this legislative path. To be clear, with the assistance of the Attorney General we have carefully considered what the Supreme Court has said. It is not open for the Government to say that this decision is worthless.”
“The Bill has been drafted to ensure compliance not just with the Constitution but also the international obligations that we will assume upon ratification of the relevant international agreements, and, therefore, we would not need it. As the Chief Justice said, CETA only requires that under Article 8.4(1) of the agreement, the execution of the award shall be governed by the laws concerning the execution of judgments or awards enforced where the execution is sought. In the case of Ireland, that is the legislation we are considering. It is a sovereign matter for us. I heard the case made in arguments by Senators McDowell, Collins and Higgins that somehow the trade agreement, CETA, and EU law overrule these provisions.”
“Senator McDowell and others raised the issue of whether we need a protocol for this legislation. I reject the suggestion that we need a protocol. Senator McDowell stated as a matter of fact that because he had appeared before the European Court of Justice that he could tell me how it would decide. I have also been involved in cases before the European Court of Justice and I would not claim to know, based on that, what it would decide. Of course, Mr. Justice Hogan was the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union. I assume he has information similar to that which the Senator has. The question the Senator raises is based on a misperception that the Bill is in conflict with the provisions of CETA and, therefore, you would need such a protocol. That is not the case.”