So far as the amendment itself is concerned, when I was framing this Bill, I frankly did not think that statutory instruments as such were things in which there was sufficient academic interest for students in the universities to require them. Statutory instruments are, by and large, documents in which there would be no academic interest whatsoever. There might be an occasional case in which there would be academic interest. I think it would be undesirable from the point of view of the university libraries themselves that we should fill them with copies of instruments for which they would have no real use.
If there is felt a real desire in the university libraries to get copies, I am certainly not going to prevent them; but I would say to the university representatives and to the mover of this motion that I am inclined to think I would be putting a burden on the librarians in expecting them to go through each individual statutory instrument they get. The various librarians may decide that only 1 per cent. of the instruments sent to them would be of real utility and suitable for retention. If the university representatives so desire, I am perfectly prepared to arrange that the instruments would be sent on demand administratively—or as the Seanad should desire, though administratively would be the easier way. I accept Senator Douglas's view as a necessary concomitant that if it is done for one college, it must be done for all four. I feel that an administrative arrangement by which the librarian would get, in any case in which he wanted it, a copy of any statutory instrument, would save a great deal of unnecessary paper work and yet the facilities would work out satisfactorily.
In regard to the point raised by Senator Walsh and supported by Senator Hawkins, one of the reasons for this Bill is to ensure that there will not be the delay in the future that there was in the past. It is to obviate that delay that I have provided this new method in the Bill. I hope the new method will mean not merely that the copies of the instruments will be available more quickly to the various bodies named but also that they will be available far more quickly in the Library of the two Houses of the Oireachtas.