Committee Reports > List of Committees > Joint > 1986 > Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities (4th Committee) > Report No. 35 - Statutory Instruments [19]

APPENDIX 4

19 March, 1986.

Secretary

Department of Justice

Re:- Winter Time Order, 1986.

[S.I. No. 45 of 1986.]

I am directed by the Chairman of the Joint Committee, Mr. Gerard Collins TD to refer to the above Order and to enquire the reason no specific reference to the actual Directive being implemented is made in the body of the instrument or in the explanatory memo thereto.

________________________

Jody Blake

Assistant Principal Committee Clerk

Department of Justice

Committee Clerk

Joint Committee on the Secondary

Legislation of the European Communities

Leinster House

Dublin 2

I am directed by the Minister for Justice to refer again to your minute dated 19 March, 1986 concerning the Winter Time Order, 1986.

The 1986 Order was drafted on similar lines to the Winter Time Order, 1981 and the Winter Time Order, 1982. The body of these three instruments was approved by the Attorney General. The Parliamentary Draftsman has been consulted and states that since 1973 or so it has been the practice of that Office to refer to a Directive being implemented by Ministerial regulations under the European Communities Act, 1972 - but only in the preamble, not in “the body of the instrument”. They also say that this practice has not been extended to Statutory Instruments made under other Acts and implementing EEC Directives.

The explanatory note to the 1986 Order was couched in similar terms to those used in the 1981 and 1982 Orders which referred in a general way to the fact that the Order gives effect to an EEC Directive concerning summer time in EEC Member States.

While the Minister would not regard a reference to the specific EEC Directive as being necessary to explain any of the provisions in the Order (but rather a point of information) and for that reason not quite appropriate for inclusion in the explanatory note in the ordinary course, he would have no objection to the inclusion of such a reference in the notes to future similar instruments should your Committee wish to have such a reference in all instruments deriving from EEC Directives.

________________________

B. O’Brien

Secretariat

13 May, 1986.