I do not want to give the impression that statute law revision is all it is doing. It has already put all the Acts since 1922 on CD-ROM, in 1998. That is now updated on an annual basis. We have also passed legislation in the House to ensure new laws being introduced are automatically consolidated with existing legislation. Since 1998 or 1999 when we bring in an Act there is automatic enactment of the legislation. We are just keeping matters up to date to obviate the need to go back and consolidate as we did, for example, with the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 or the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 1993. There is automatic consolidation. As I pointed out to Deputy Rabbitte every time we did a water Act, we just introduced a new a water services Bill or whatever. What we now do — and it is the same with land conveyancing, liquor licensing and so on — each time a major Bill is enacted is go back and try to clean out the Statute Book. These Acts do not remain on the Statute Book. Once Acts are consolidated they no longer remain on the Statute Book.
As regards the 100 or so Acts I referred to earlier, we will check that there is nothing relevant in this legislation. One never knows, but most of them seem to be out of date now. After checking that, an Act will be introduced which will remove them from the Statute Book.
Most developed countries have been tackling the quality and quantity of their regulations for several years. This is just one part of the regulation. The reason they have done that is that the sheer volume and complexity of regulations has grown rapidly in terms of numbers and length and the pace at which they need to be revised. Significant costs are associated with regulations as well, including the cost to Government of administering the regulatory system and the costs to business and citizens in complying with regulation. Recent surveys conducted by the Small Firms Association and IBEC have shown that half the staff in a small company can be occupied with form filling. Such initiatives are not always consistent. When one Department may be getting rid of particular regulations another is introducing them, for different reasons. There is no co-ordination. Much of the work on the regulatory issues — which are covered in these questions as well — is part of that. The legislation is just one part of the process in clearing up the Statute Book.
I pointed out at the conference that the European Union, too, should look at its own legislative system, given the plethora of EU law, regulations and directives. There should be less of those, too. At least we can try to further develop procedures that focus on economic and competitive issues; review our administration burdens; identify priority areas for the simplification of Community law; develop regulatory indicators to measure the quality and the pace of regulation reform and improve regulatory structures for procedures in member states. A small unit in my Department is examining those issues both the European and Irish contexts. It is not doing that in isolation. It is a group that includes the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom and is covering the next three Presidencies after ours, to try to address these matters as regards EU laws. This exercise is being carried out on our own Statute Book, in our own Departments and agencies and in legislation to be brought forward. The situation will be dealt with, seriatim, for years before we can reach a good position, but at least it will prevent a continuation of what has built up for hundreds of years and try to improve the situation for the future.