The amendment was introduced originally in order to facilitate the Hyster project in Limerick which is an all-makes parts project. They wanted to avoid being sued for producing parts for products produced by other people on the grounds that the spare parts were based on drawings of those parts. They wanted to avoid a claim being made against them by the original manufacturers of those products that they were in breach of copyright by using those drawings as a basis for producing spare parts. As the House knows, that project, which in my opinion was not a good one because the explosure of the State and the taxpayer was far too great relative to the risks taken by the company promoters, Hyster Ltd, is not going ahead. Therefore, I am a bit puzzled as to why we need the amendment, given that that was the original purpose of it.
I know that the Minister's amendment may be moving in a direction similar to the direction of the recently published Copyright Bill in the UK where copyrights protection which previously was for the life of the author plus a number of years — I cannot remember the number of years but it was for a very long period — is now being restricted to about 20 years. That British legislation was only published last week. I should like to ask the Minister why it is considered necessary to go ahead with the amendment in the light of the Hyster project not going ahead. Why is the Minister not waiting to see whether we should follow the more comprehensive legislative approach in Britain rather than introducing a piecemeal measure of this type?