A specific provision of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 had permitted members of the Seanad Éireann to sit in the Assembly; this section was now repealed as obsolete.

SDLP politician Seamus Mallon was appointed to the Irish Senate but then lost his seat in the then Northern Ireland Assembly after a challenge by Unionists.

The changes proposed under the Disqualification Bill 2000 were the subject of heated debate in the British House of Lords.

They represent the giving up of what has always been regarded in Ireland as very important constitutional provisions....When the Irish constitutional changes took effect on 2nd December, we believed it only right to follow those changes by removing in this Bill one of the last distinctions made in domestic legislation between Ireland and those other countries with which we have an equally warm and special relationship through the Commonwealth.Unionist Members first proposed an amendment to the bill concerning the name used for the Irish state.

To accept the amendments would make the drafting of the Bill inconsistent with the practice of the Government in other legislation.

They argued that this law would benefit only Sinn Féin and that that party might use the new law to permit it to send its Members of Parliament to sit in Dáil Éireann and speak for their constituents in the United Kingdom in Dáil Éireann and that "would be huge step towards a United Ireland by stealth".