I appreciate the Minister's approach to this question. He has now stated that all the four elements in paragraphs (a) to (d) of subsection (1) of section 1 must be present to constitute the kind of scheme that comes under the Bill, but the fact remains that in the preamble to the definition the word "scheme" means:
any trading scheme which includes the following elements...
Paragraphs (a) to (d) are then listed. Taking the English language at face value, there is nothing to show that the scheme must include the four elements, as the Minister has now stated, which is what he meant to have included in the Bill. There is nothing there to exclude further elements, as the Minister must also admit. The phrase is "Scheme means any trading scheme which includes...". It does not say that it must include the four elements exclusively. It is a question of putting this matter beyond any shadow of doubt.
Paragraph (c) is the crunch. In order to come under the prohibition section of the Bill, element (c) must be present. For that to be so there must be a definite connection between payments by participants and the prospects held out to them, as mentioned in paragraph (c). I fully appreciate what the Minister has said, but the fact is that that is not stated in the drafting of the Bill. As the Minister well knows, a Bill becomes an Act and becomes a legal document. In this country we do not have what people have elsewhere, the spirit of the Act. As far as I know, what the Minister has said on Committee Stage cannot be taken as admissible evidence in the event of this Act being discussed in court, whereas this could be done elsewhere, I understand—for example in the UK. What a court must make judgment on is what they see in cold print in front of them.
In order to put this definition beyond any shadow of doubt, it should be stated that it excludes people engaged in bona fide operations. As Deputy Enright mentioned, there are strange types of sales promotions, as the Minister is well aware, some of them closely related to pyramid selling—first cousins or second cousins, at least. Unless we get down to the nitty gritty of the operations it is difficult to differentiate between pyramid selling and the kind of operation which is taking place, albeit a legitimate, lawful, legal operation. If this Bill goes through in its present form there is a danger here, though not a very great one, and on Committee Stage it is our job on this side of the House, and indeed on the Government side, to ensure that as good a job as possible has been done on the drafting and that no loopholes are left whereby any one word might be open to misinterpretation or misconstruction. This is very important in the case of the definition section of a Bill, where one is defining words. One is not talking about a word down through a section; one is talking here about a definitive section of the Bill. That preamble worries me by stating " `Scheme' means any trading scheme which includes the following...".
Let me finish by repeating that it does not say that it must include all four elements, nor does it say that any further elements are excluded. This is my argument, which is logical. I fully appreciate the Minister's problem in that accepting amendments from this side of the House is not the normal thing. I hope however, that the Minister is not averse to this kind of suggestion if he saw that it would help at the end of the day to produce a Bill which was watertight and beyond any misinterpretation or misconstruction by anyone outside this House.