Speaking in the Seanad on 3 November 1999 on the Cement (Repeal of Enactments) Bill, I said:

The purpose of the Bill makes this an historic occasion because I do not remember a Bill coming before the House which demolishes existing legislation.

This is a smashing Bill. It comprises one page with no waffle. It is not about "whittling down", "mending", "diluting" or any of the other terms we could have used. The Bill does away with legislation which is no longer needed. The legislation being repealed may have served a purpose in the past but it no longer does so and the Minister has said that we are going to do away with it - it is finished.

It is remarkable how seldom this happens. I do not think it has ever happened before, and certainly not in my time in the House, that we have grabbed hold of something and said, "Let's do away with it completely".

There is an analogy from the supermarket business where we are always putting up new signs so that we end up with loads of them. A customer once said to me, "You're great at putting up signs but you forget to take them down again". It was not until we looked at this that we discovered that many signs no longer served a purpose.

This analogy is a pointer to what we should be seeking to achieve in many other areas. I do not object to regulations per se as they are an inevitable part of creating fairness. However, as the world becomes more complex we must expect that will also be the case with environmental regulations. The result is that regulations are introduced which are never done away with.

I wonder if this could be an example for other cases. Should we consider including an expiry date on almost all regulations so that we re-examine them after a period of time? We seem to put a lot of energy into making new regulations and none into abolishing those that are unnecessary. Our bureaucracy is geared towards introducing legislation but not to dismantling it.

The first response which may have been made to the Minister when she proposed this legislation was, "But Minister, you don't need to abolish it. The Minister already has the power to issue new licences to any newcomer in the cement industry, so let's leave it as it is and let the Minister do that".

The argument would have been made, "Well, Minister, that's all right for today but we never know when we might need that system again".

I am delighted the Minister said no to such arguments and decided to repeal the regulations and to start from scratch. I hope this will be followed by many similar initiatives. Government should be open and transparent but it should also be simple. Doing away with legislation and slimming down the regulatory framework is one way of avoiding the over-reaching arm of government and letting the country operate with less government and fewer regulations. In the past we have tended to introduce more regulations.

I think the Minister has grabbed hold of this issue and I hope she will do likewise with many others. We have far too many regulations which may have been necessary in the past.