Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 15 Jun 2000

Vol. 163 No. 18

Statute Law (Restatement) Bill, 2000: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Ms Hanafin)

The purpose of this short Bill is to confer on the Attorney General power to make available versions of Acts of the Oireachtas in a more readable form. These updated versions, to be known as restatements, will not alter the substance of the law and, accordingly, will not require the approval of the Houses of the Oireachtas. However, once a restatement has been certified by the Attorney General under this Bill, it may be cited in court as prima facie evidence of the legislation set out in it.

The background to the Bill is the need to take steps to modernise the Statute Book. Every year 50 to 60 Acts are enacted in the State, many of which amend previous Acts. A user of the statutes will be familiar with the problem of having to consult several Acts in order to identify the statute law on a particular point.

The need to modernise the Statute Book was recognised by the Government in June 1999 in Reducing Red Tape – An Action Programme for Regulatory Reform in Ireland. This programme was based on the report of the strategic management initiative's working group on regulatory reform and is aimed at improving the quality of regulation through a process of consolidation, revision and repeal. The programme required each Department and office to identify the scope for consolidation and repeal of primary and secondary legislation. The aim was to simplify, wherever possible, the process of doing business with Government and to make legislation more coherent and accessible. As a result of this report, consultations have taken place between the Department of the Taoiseach, the statute law revision unit in the Office of the Attorney General and Departments and offices to identify areas of statute law in need of revision and consolidation.

The Law Reform Commission consultation paper, Statutory Drafting and Interpretation: Plain Language and the Law, provisionally recommended that "priority should be given to the consolidation of statutes, in order to facilitate readability". The commission also recommended that "attention should be given to the updating of older legislation, and its re-drafting in modern language and format". A programme setting out proposed areas to be consolidated and restated will be brought to Government in the autumn.

The problem of the untidy state of the Statute Book has not been addressed by the State. In other common law states there are policies in place to have regular revisions with the result that the laws in Canada and Australia are made more accessible through regular programmes of revision. As part of the initial programme for statute law revision, the Attorney General advised the Government that it would be helpful to introduce legislation under which the Attorney General may prepare versions of Acts of the Oireachtas in a more readable form without altering their substance.

Mr. Costello

On a point of order, we do not have copies of the Minister of State's speech.

An Cathaoirleach

I will try to arrange for copies of the Minister of State's speech to be circulated to Members.

Ms Hanafin

Variations on this process of restatement operate effectively in other common law jurisdictions such as the United States, Canada and Australia. The model proposed in the Bill is most closely analogous to the systems in place in New South Wales since 1972 and Queensland since 1992.

What is proposed under this Bill is that the Attorney General will be enabled to publish a certified version of the text of an Act incorporating any amendments made by subsequent Acts into one up to date statement of the Act. The proposed process is most easily explained by reference to an example, the Sale of Goods Act, 1893, which was amended by the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980. Once this Bill is enacted, the Attorney General may publish the Sale of Goods Acts, 1893 and 1980, in a restated form. Textual amendments, that is, amendments which replace text in the Act of 1893 with new text taken from the Act of 1989, will be set out so that the Act of 1893 may be read as amended. Where provisions are repealed, they will not appear but a brief note or explanation will be provided so the reader of the Sale of Goods Acts, 1893 and 1980, will be able to read all the relevant statute law in the one text. This exercise will pave the ground for the ultimate revision of the law and the replacement of old Acts with new more readable formats.

A policy of restatement will be particularly useful for Acts which have been consolidated and subsequently amended. For example, the excellent work undertaken in relation to the consolidation of income tax and successive efforts to consolidate social welfare law will be supplemented by restatement so that consolidated Acts that are subsequently amended may be kept up to date. The Bill allows a restatement to gender proof and reformat the text of legislation so that, if necessary, the sequence of sections may be reordered to make them more easily readable.

It is important to stress that a restatement will not amend existing legislation and, accordingly, the process of restatement will not require scrutiny by the Houses of the Oireachtas. Section 4 of the Bill expressly confirms that a restatement will not in any way alter the substance of any Act or statutory instrument.

Section 5 of the Bill provides that once certified by the Attorney General under this Bill a restatement may be cited in court as prima facie evidence of the legislation contained in it. A court will take notice without formal proof of a restatement. This provision ensures that a restatement will be of practical use to the citizen. This initiative, together with regular updating of statute law on CD-ROM and making statutes available on the lnternet, will go a long way towards providing a modern, user friendly Statute Book.

Those are the main provisions in the Bill. The innovation provided for is important and timely and I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Manning

I thank the Minister of State for her clear statement of the principles of this Bill, which I welcome. Any measure which makes it easier for people to access and understand legislation is welcome. It is surprising it has taken until now to introduce such a measure. All of us who deal with legislation on a regular basis know it can be cumbersome and puzzling and that checking statutes cited in legislation can often involve much research. This is part of what should be a constant process of updating and simplifying legislation.

I pay tribute to the parliamentary draftsman's office. When I was Leader of the House I was a member of the legislation committee. I saw at first hand the enormous pressure under which that office worked and the high levels of skill, patience and dedication required by the people there and the wide range of scholarship which is a sine qua non of an effective draftsman. They are some of the unsung heroes of the public sector. They are rarely, if ever, given credit for what they do, yet their output is prodigious and their work is of the highest standard.

I have one problem with this Bill. I disagree with the Minister of State who said that restatement does not need parliamentary scrutiny. It is in the nature of legislation that it ema nates from and is examined in Parliament and it bears with it the seal of parliamentary approval. Without Parliament, it would not have the status of legislation. Even if we are assured that restatement does not involve any change in the law, there should be an element of parliamentary consultation in the process.

I have tabled an amendment to this effect on Committee Stage which I am sure will be welcomed by all sides. There should be a small special joint committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas which would meet in public and to whom the Attorney General would explain what is involved in the restatement and answer any questions people may have so there is an element of certainty and openness before the restatement takes effect. It could also be done as part of the workload of one of the existing committees. It would only need to meet once or twice a year to do this work.

While I am on that subject, it is a great pity that the committee on statutory instruments no longer exists, or if it exists it does not meet. Part of the ongoing work of Parliament should be a constant examination of statutory instruments and the way in which they are applied. We all know that one of the ways in which the intentions of Parliament can either be abused or, more usually, stretched is through the use of statutory instruments and we fall down very badly in not making the scrutiny of statutory instruments part of our ongoing work. I would like to see a committee established before which the Attorney General would appear once or twice a year to explain what is involved in the restatements, answer any queries and assure Parliament that the intentions of those who passed the Bill in the first place are not being altered in any way by the restatement. I do not believe that any change would be deliberate but we live in an age where matters need to be explained and seen to be done with an openness and accountability which is not in the Bill and, consequently, I will be tabling an amendment to it.

Much of the confusion about legislation is not due to the archaic nature of Bills. Surprisingly, many of us find when we read Bills drafted before the State was set up or in the early days of the State that the language frequently has a clarity which is not always present in latter day legislation. I would exhort those who draft laws to seek, as far as possible, to respect the English language – I know Senator Dardis has strong views on this as well – and strive for clarity and simplicity. It would be useful also if the parliamentary draftsman's office could provide seminars from time to time to Members of Parliament on the language and the complexities of legislation because most of us have no previous training in the reading of laws, yet we are expected in a very short time to master the details and the complexities of the language of legislation. It would be a useful function if, from time to time, the draftsman's office held a seminar which would benefit not just new Members but all of us.

I welcome the Bill. It is useful, necessary and timely and I wish it a speedy progress through the House.

Mr. Dardis

I welcome the legislation before us. It is overdue and desirable because even for people who are familiar with dealing with aspects of legislation, the difficulty of cross-referencing and consulting earlier Bills where there is not a consolidation Bill in place makes it difficult to understand what is at stake. I sometimes believe this is a deliberate ploy by the legal profession to ensure they are kept in continuous employment over an extended period of time since they are the only ones competent to translate this inscrutable language, the provisions, subsections and so on.

To a certain extent this Bill should not be necessary. That goes back to a point Senator Manning made. The legislation itself should be clear, readable and easily understood. It is certainly easy to read and understand legislation drafted in the last century. The Local Government Bill of 100 years ago which set up the county councils is a case in point because it is easy to understand the language. I could go on at some length and bore Senator Quinn and the other Members of the House about my campaign, which Senator Quinn will recall when I was on that side of the House, about the "in relation to" disease. The "in relation to" disease reached epidemic proportions in legislation. It is not quite as evident as it was then but I do not know why the term "in relation to" is used when the small preposition "by", "with" or "for" will suffice. The campaign has been somewhat successful in that there is a diminution of the "in relation to" phrase in legislation.

Even in the Bill itself, which is designed to make matters clear for people, section 3(1) states: "A restatement shall be identified on its face as a restatement and, where applicable, by the most collective citation of the statutes restated to which it relates." I do not understand that and I doubt if many people would. Perhaps there is a certain contradiction in trying to make matters clearer and then putting in a phrase like that.

I recognise the practical difficulties faced by the draftspersons and I agree with Senator Manning that they do a remarkably good job because it is rare for us to find textual errors. We may disagree with the content of the Bill but it is quite rare for us to find errors of syntax or language which would make an amendment necessary. It sometimes happens but it is rare and from that point of view the people do a very competent job and they are to be commended for it, but they should look at the clarity of language.

With regard to the restatement which the Minister has spoken about, a valuable job could be done by somebody in a university or perhaps a practising journalist or journalists in terms of translating, if I may use that word, Bills into accessible language and making them easily understood. I have said that before and I believe there is some merit in it. The Law Reform Commission produced a consultation paper, which the Minister referred to, on statutory drafting and interpretation, Plain Language and the Law. A seminar was held on language and the law which I attended in Government Buildings arising from the Law Reform Commission paper. The Minister quoted a phrase from that paper: "Priority should be given to the consolidation of statutes in order to facilitate readability." Why not say "to make them more easily read" or words to that effect? Even the people who are trying to make matters clearer seem to have some difficulty with the language and perhaps that is something to be examined. There is a terrible tendency to put in big words and complex phrases when small words and simple phrases will work just as well or even more effectively.

The Minister spoke about legislation being on CD-ROM, the Internet and so on. I am very impressed by the Oireachtas site on the Internet. It makes it very easy for Members to go back over debates to find material. There is a very good cross-referencing section. I had reason recently to try to find a few sentences referring to part of legislation and I did not have a great deal of trouble finding them. The people responsible for that need to be commended because it is an excellent facility. Apart from the assistance it provides to Members, it helps to make the work of Parliament much more accessible to a wider audience and indeed to an international audience.

The Bill is a sensible move in the right direction and I very much welcome it. I share Senator Manning's reservation that there should be some degree of parliamentary scrutiny, whether by way of committee or some other system, and I hope it will be dealt with. There should be some consultation and I ask that the Minister consider that when replying. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Quinn

I welcome the Minister to the House and I welcome the Bill. I was unaware of the Bill until I came across it and my eyes have been opened to the need for it. I am delighted we are not taking Report Stage today because even in the case of a Bill like this, which is welcome, I disagree with taking all Stages on the one day.

It was not until recently, when looking through the Intoxicating Liquor Bill, that I realised the need for this Bill. We are talking about 1904. When I queried something with the Minister, he corrected me by quoting section 3 of the 1927 Act, which turned out to be incorrect when examined, but that will be sorted out. I realised the need for restatement, for consolidation and for easier language.

I had a look last night at some of the problems and why definitions are created, not necessarily in legislation. I read an article which stated that 70% of employees in Europe were questioned as to whether they would accept less money for a changed title. That may explain why we some times use other words. Apparently a cleaner, if called an environmental technician, would be willing to work for less, and a tea lady, if called a catering supervisor, would be willing to work for less. There may well be reasons why, in other businesses and other places, words like that are used.

The biggest offender in this regard is not the parliamentary draftsman's office, although they may have got away with it in recent times. The European Commission is to blame for most of this. If it is desired to downgrade a civil servant, he becomes derepersonalised – a word I have not heard before, but apparently it is common. Another lovely one is that if a person is over somebody, he now has hierarchical authority. I can see where these words come in. The best of all was one from the Information Society Directorate which has a section called the "Integrated Management of Resources and Horizontal Questions". That is from Europe. We will not take responsibility for it other than keeping our eye on it.

I welcome the Bill as a long overdue step towards making our statute law more comprehensible and more accessible to the general body of our citizens, not just to those of us involved in the Legislature. If we are to have true democracy, we must have rule by law, but that law must be as simple as possible, as understandable as possible, and as accessible as possible. Few would argue that our lawmaking in this State has, up to now, passed muster in all or any of those respects. In inheriting a legal system from our colonial masters some 80 years ago, we unfortunately embraced some of its bad aspects as well as its good ones.

On the issue of accessibility, a major step forward was taken in 1998 with the publication on CD-ROM of all the statutes from 1922 to 1997 and the associated publication of those statutes on the Internet. I found it of huge benefit to be able to access them. When that first CD-ROM was published we were promised that it would be updated each year, but for some reason that I cannot understand this has not happened. As a result, the statutes for 1998 and 1999 are not yet available in electronic form, either in CD form or on the Internet. That is a gap which should be filled as a matter of urgency.

I hope that when the restatements envisaged by this Bill start to appear, they will be published electronically at the same time as on paper, and as part of the same integrated publishing operation, not as an afterthought that happens at some indeterminate later time. It is interesting that some Ministers make sure this happens every time, while in other Departments it seems to be done as an afterthought and only some time later. We now recognise that publication can be done in that manner and it is of huge benefit.

Making the statutes available electronically not only replaced whole shelves of volumes with a single CD, which was an obvious advantage, but the nature of the electronic medium made it much easier to follow up all those cross-references that we are trying to correct here. That is absolutely essential in a situation where we tend to legislate by repeatedly amending existing legislation. It is a very rare Act that is complete in itself without reference to other statutes.

We make this situation worse by an apparent reluctance to pass consolidation Acts, which bring together all the legislation on one topic that we have ever passed in the State. The only consolidation Bill that I can remember in my time in the Seanad is the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997. I understand it is policy to consolidate Finance Acts every ten years.

There are many other areas where law would become more accessible if it were consolidated, for example, the raft of employment legislation that has been passed over the past 20 years, and more particularly in the past ten years. For small companies that do not have the luxury of a personnel department, compliance with all this legislation is made much more difficult because it is so fragmented and is scattered around in so many different pieces of legislation. If I understand the object of this Bill correctly, a major purpose of these restatements will be to provide that consolidation effect and, perhaps, a more practical way of satisfying that need than passing a whole raft of consolidation statutes.

I welcome the implicit recognition in this Bill that the language in our statutes can often be a barrier to understanding them. I hope, however, that the availability of this restatement avenue will not deflect the parliamentary draftsmen from the need always to search for simpler, clearer language when they are drafting original Bills. I agree with Senator Dardis who cited one or two examples, even from this Bill. It would be a retrograde step if they gave up on the need to make Bills clearer than they were before and used the excuse that plain and simple language is just for the restatement and that they can be as obscure and convoluted as they like in drafting Bills. The danger is that they might focus on the restatements and process new Bills in the way we have developed the habit of doing in recent times.

There is a need, which I am not sure is fully recognised within the legal profession – and maybe with the ulterior motive that Senator Dardis says – to update and modernise the language and the phrasing that is used in legal matters. I know the Attorney General thinks the same. Every profession has its own jargon, which is useful up to a point. However, in the case of the law, there is a need for a precision that goes far beyond the use of ordinary language. There is a natural temptation, which is not always resisted, to hide behind the legal jargon and to use it as a means of keeping lay people out of the professional area. I agree with Senator Dardis that there may be an ulterior motive. That is wrong and it springs from the misconception that the law belongs to the legal profession. In a democracy, the law should belong to the people. It should belong to the citizens, and the role of professional legal people should be as facilitators for the general body of citizens, not as high priests jealously guarding their sacred books.

We have not been given any examples of what a restatement might look like. It is hard to judge its potential effectiveness from the descriptions we have, in spite of the Minister's explanation. The proof of the effectiveness of this approach will be available only when the restatements begin to appear. I am inclined to be optimistic about the potential for communicating legal matters more clearly so that they are much more easily understood than they were before. One has only to look at the explanatory and financial memoranda that accompany new Bills. They are often models of clarity, and I have often wished we could pass the memorandum itself into law rather than the Bill to which it refers. Very often I do not look at the Bill until I have gone through that, and I wonder why we need the Bill at all.

I welcome not just the Bill in itself but what I take to be a new resolve to make our laws more accessible and more understandable, a resolve that will manifest itself in other ways, in addition to the restatements that will flow from this Bill. I believe the intention is there to achieve and that this wording will do it. I look forward to any amendment that may be made. Senator Manning has referred to his amendment and I am happy to support it.

Dr. M. Hayes

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. This legislation is long overdue and extremely welcome. I commend her for it.

I join Senator Manning in commending the work carried out by parliamentary draftsmen over the years. We tend not to notice the work they do until it gets too complicated and then we complain about it. I hope that in launching this Bill the Government is also committing itself to providing the resources for the parliamentary draftman's office. This is highly labour intensive work and it is rather futile to have the intention of doing something without providing the means. That office needs resources to enable this to be brought about.

I fully support Senator Dardis's plea for plain language. I am glad he too likes the Local Government Act, 1898. These great 19th century local government and public health Acts were models of clarity and plain language. I commend the plea for plain language in our legislation.

We are faced with difficulties because Acts of Parliament are technical documents. There will always be a tension between the technical needs of legal interpretation and the clarity which makes it accessible to the ordinary reader. There should be an effort made to shift the balance back to the side of clarity which has been lost.

This Bill is important because it can make law accessible to people. It is ridiculous that a person must ferret around among 20 to 40 Acts to find out their rights or obligations, particularly with regard to the licensing Acts and industrial relations Acts. The ideal would be to have obligations or responsibilities regarding a particular set of activities clearly stated in one consolidated Act.

The Minister of State was possibly a little over confident in saying that the restated version does not change the law and does not need the scrutiny of the Oireachtas. I am quite sure that the intention is not to change the law in substance, but the danger is that every now and again it might. Restatements do have that effect. For instance, a change could be made to the order in which things are done and the position of a clause or phrase in an Act might run the risk of changing the purport or intent.

The pursuit of clarity and readability runs the risk of effecting change. It also runs the risk of losing the benefit of quite an amount of case law. For that reason I rather hope the Minister of State will be able to accept Senator Manning's amendment, or some variant of it, and at least allow the restatement to be run past the House or an Oireachtas committee. This would be a useful process. It might only throw up a difficulty one out of ten times or perhaps more often. This process would be an important safeguard. It would also indicate that the law, as Senator Quinn has said, is not the property of the lawyers, draftsmen or courts but of the people and it is the people who appoint the Oireachtas to deal with it.

With that reservation, which is rather a proposal to enhance what the Minister of State is trying to do, I commend the Bill and welcome it. I hope it means that there will be a real attack on this area and that resources will be put into it.

Like Senator Quinn, I too would like to see the day when the Statute Book is available on CD-ROM. We must think of ways people can access information and adapt to these new technologies.

Mr. Costello

I agree with virtually everything that has been said. I welcome the Minister of State to the House. This welcome legislation is long overdue. We have a restatement of text which is parallel to the existing legislation. Perhaps the Minister of State might table an amendment to the effect that this applies not just to statutes but to statutory instruments as well. That would cover the whole gamut of legislation passed through the House.

We have all been baffled by various legislative formats and texts presented to us, trying to decipher what is the precise meaning of legislation. It is very difficult to do this in many cases and it has not got any easier over the years. Textual material seems to have become more complicated, waffly and greater use is being made of big words, subjunctives and clauses that modify or enhance what could be stated in a simpler form.

I join in complimenting the draftspeople on the very disciplined way they carry out their work. It is very seldom that flaws of any substance appear in a text. Nevertheless, draftspeople, civil servants and bureaucrats seem to live in a world of their own in terms of the categories of words that they use in texts. I often think that the Minister of State, myself and other people who come from the teaching profession would be the best people to run this type of material past because we have the experience of explaining complicated matters to students. Students would laugh at the text that comes before us and appears in many official documents. They would not tolerate it at all.

Perhaps legislative text could be subjected to a refining process. Someone could rewrite it – and this would be separate from the restatement – in a fresh manner. Many speakers have referred to the freshness and the specific nature of the legislation that was passed in the last century pre-1922. Legislation from that era is much clearer and more easily interpreted by the ordinary citizen than the legislation being produced in the 21st century.

I would like an improvement in the text presented to us. Even with the best of text, in terms of legislative provisions coming through, there is a need for the equivalent of an explanatory memorandum or a restatement of the text in meaningful language. I do not mind as long as it is meaningful when it is restated. We have no guarantee because no one has chosen to present us with a restatement. Canada, the United States, Queensland and New South Wales have been given as examples but we do not have a sample of the text of a restatement before us. In a sense we are buying a pig in a poke. We do not know what we will get. There is only an assertion that there will be a restatement which the Attorney General will stamp. The Attorney General is a lawyer, a profession with a sympathy for archaic language. Lawyers are the high priests of a discipline and are happy within it once they have spent years learning it. It is advantageous for them to use language that the ordinary citizen does not understand when he or she needs professional help.

The Minister assured us that there is nothing unconstitutional about delegating these powers to the Attorney General. She told us that we are not amending legislation and the seal of approval of this House is not required. This Bill provides for information which will run parallel with the original Bills passed by these Houses. It would be better for the Oireachtas to go through such information rather than leaving it to the Attorney General. Putting it to the Houses would allow for debate and discussion, as happens with many other statutory instruments.

There are instances in the Bill which propose amendments and changes. Section 2(3) states:

A restatement may renumber the provisions of a statute or portion of a statute and otherwise alter the form of a statute or portion of a statute.

What does "otherwise" mean? That is left to the discretion of the Attorney General, meaning that the statute can be changed. It is not the function of the Attorney General to renumber or otherwise alter the form of a statute or portion of a statute – that is the function of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I cannot accept the delegation of that function to the Attorney General.

Section 2(4) allows a word or words importing either the masculine or feminine genders in a provision to be substituted for a word or words importing both such genders in a restatement relating to it. Gender proofing will, therefore, become the remit of the Attorney General. It is the function of the Oireachtas, not the Attorney General, to gender proof legislation. How can that responsibility be delegated to the Attorney General?

Section 5(1) states:

A statement purporting to be certified under section 2 shall be prima facie evidence of the law contained in the provisions to which it relates of any statute or statutory instrument.

How can it be prima facie evidence if the Oireachtas has no say in the matter? Evidence of that nature has legal authority. I also cannot accept that as a function of the Attorney General.

Has the Attorney General given his opinion of this? He is conferring authority on himself when he is not an independent person. All power now lies with him and he is the arbiter, the person advising on the legislation. How can that be the case? It is inappropriate that the Attorney General can approve a Bill which confers on him powers parallel to those of the Oireachtas. He has encroached on our domain. I have not heard any legal arguments which justify that position.

I am not satisfied with amendment No. 8a proposed by Senator Manning. I understand the intention, to prevent a situation where the Attorney General rubber stamps the restatement and the Oireachtas has no role, but the amendment only suggests that the Attorney General advises a special joint committee of the Oireachtas of his intentions. Such committees have no constitutional standing in legislative terms. If this legislation is unconstitutional and we should require the Oireachtas to look at the matters referred to here, a joint committee would not suffice.

The restatement process is desirable and I will be delighted to see the final product. It is a pity we do not have the text of a Bill and a restatement so we can see if it is any better than the original. We do not know if the restatement will be any clearer for lay people. If it is not, it will not be not much use. That is the purpose of restatement – so Seán and Mary Citizen can see the contents of legislation, as well as consolidating legislation which has been amended over the years.

What happens if there is a conflict of interpretation between the Attorney General's stamped restatement and the Bill? The Attorney General will be reading many restatements for his stamp of approval so he will have to read the legislation as well. He will be a busy man if he is to do that personally. If he is not going to deal with them personally, who will deal with them? Can he delegate this function? If we delegate it to him, can he further delegate it to his legal officers to ensure that the restatement conforms to the text of the legislation?

Has there been any progress in dealing with pre-1922 legislation? There is an entire body of pre-Independence and pre-Act of Union legislation which should be looked at with a view to consolidation so the entire body of legislation would exist under the auspices of this State. There are many Acts going back centuries which still operate and which are not appropriate in a democracy.

What resources will be required to enable this work to be done? That is not mentioned in the Bill.

Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Ms Hanafin)

I thank Senators for the welcome they have shown the Bill. We all agree that there is a need for legislation which is accessible to the public. The restatement process will be of assistance in that regard.

A number of Senators commented on the language used in legislation. I accept Senator Costello's point that a teacher armed with a red pen could cut through a great deal of this language in a short time. Legislation, by its nature, tends to be complicated but that does not mean that the language used should also be complicated.

A great deal of legislation, particularly in the areas of tax, social welfare and finance, has been consolidated in recent years. As Senator Quinn said, this means that there is a need to update the CD-ROM which details all statutes enacted between 1922 to 1997. He also referred to the need to make all restatements of legislation available on the Internet. I understand that the CD-ROM to which Senator Quinn referred will be updated, before the end of the year, to include legislation enacted up to the end of 1999. In the future, it will be updated on a regular basis and all restatements will appear on the Internet as soon as they become available. This shows that we are moving in the right direction.

Senator Manning suggested that seminars be held by the parliamentary draftsman's office to allow Members of both Houses to become more familiar with the way legislation is drafted. The Attorney General is organising a conference on this matter which will be held on 6 and 7 October, but it is largely for the benefit of public servants and lawyers. I will ask the Attorney General to invite Members of both Houses to this conference or to arrange a similar conference for their benefit. This is an important matter, particularly in light of the fact that all legislation is introduced and enacted in the Houses.

Senator Manning raised a valid point about the need for the Houses of the Oireachtas to scruti nise restatements. I indicated earlier that restatements would not require scrutiny, but in the interests of good practice and parliamentary accountability it might be good if we found a method by which restatements could be returned to the Houses to be scrutinised. Failing that, perhaps the Houses could decide what should happen to restatements in advance of their introduction. We will deal with that matter on Committee Stage.

Senators Maurice Hayes and Costello referred to the level of resources available to the parliamentary draftsman and I can inform them that a number of new members of staff have been appointed recently to his office. The output of the office in recent years in terms of the amount of legislation it has drafted has been extraordinary. The Government is committed to strengthening the parliamentary draftsman's office by providing further resources.

Senator Costello referred to the use of prima facie evidence in court. It is important that restatements can be used by the public. Restatements will ensure that senior counsel will not be the only people in a position to use legislation in court or to understand such legislation. We may be able to address the Senator's concerns if we are in a position to accommodate Senator Manning's suggestion that the Oireachtas be given power to approve, in some form, legislation which is restated.

Other Members' comments related largely to language and the need to ensure that legislation is readable. It is important to reiterate that restatements will not change legislation, they will merely ensure that Bills and Acts appear in a more reader friendly format. As Senator Dardis stated, there is a tendency in legislation to use words which are not needed. I was astonished when the Taoiseach in announcing my appointment referred to me as the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, at the Department of Education and Science and at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform with special responsibility for children. It took him five sentences to indicate the office I hold. I do not object in any way to the Taoiseach's use of that long title but I frequently refer to myself as Minister for children. There are occasions when we do not object to the use of too many words.

I thank Senators for their comments. We will deal with a number of the specific points they raised on Committee Stage.

Question put and agreed to.

Acting Chairman (Mr. J. Cregan)

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Mr. Dardis

Now.

Agreed to take Committee Stage today.