The Supreme Court ruled in November 2022 that the EU–Canada Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) could only be ratified if changes were made to the Arbitration Act 2010.

The trade deal has been provisionally applied across the EU since 2017.

The Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025 was debated at second stage in the Dáil yesterday, where opposition TDs sharply criticised the failure to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny on the bill.

The Oireachtas committee on foreign affairs and trade — where a majority of members belong to Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil — agreed in July to a request from then foreign affairs minister Simon Harris to waive the process.

Sinn Féin’s Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire told TDs it “beggars belief that legislation with such weight and implications is being rushed through without any real scrutiny and without having the opportunity to bring in expert witnesses, constitutional witnesses, trade witnesses and so on”.

Duncan Smith of the Labour Party accused the government of “running away from scrutiny”.

Opposition TDs also criticised the investment dispute settlement system included in the CETA deal, despite EU claims that it addresses criticism of the controversial ISDS system.

Foreign affairs minister Helen McEntee insisted the new system preserves “the right of the Irish government and this house to take measures to achieve legitimate public policy objectives, for example, environmental protections, consumer rights or food safety”.

However, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said the legislation was only necessary because the government “knows that if it suggested setting up a parallel system whereby corporations could sue states outside the regular judicial process, it would not win a referendum on it”.

A vote on the bill will take place today.