Supreme Court In Ireland Case Analysis

GIILS Assignment on the role played by the Supreme Court in Ireland and whether it should always follow its own previous decisions.

The Supreme Court is the court of final appeal in the Irish legal system. It was established in 1961 according to article 34 of the constitution of Ireland wherein it states in 34.1.1 that “The court of final appeal shall be called the Supreme Court”. The fact that this is written into the constitution is important as the government cannot at any point attempt to abolish the power of The Supreme Court without the use of a constitutional referendum. The Supreme court is a “Collegiate Appellate Court” meaning that it hears appeals and more than one judge presides over cases held there (either three, five or (in extreme

To give a recent example, Gunning v. Brian Sherry Solicitors [2015] IESC, a case regarding the possession of a Greystones cottage was previously heard in the High Court in November 2010 before Mrs. Gunning decided to appeal the high Court ruling in the Supreme Court.

Although the main role of the SC is to hear appeals, there are two exceptions in which its role changes i.e. when a case goes straight to the Supreme Court. One of these has never been utilised however. This exception arises when the president of Ireland is found to be incapacitated to such a level that he can no longer perform the duties that the citizens of Ireland need him to do. The Supreme Court must decide whether the president is in fact unable to perform his duties for the people of Ireland (however the president would normally choose to step down in this situation).

The second exception to the main role of the Supreme Court involves the unlikely event that before signing new legislation into law, the president may feel that it is unconstitutional and he/she may refer it to the Supreme Court to decide whether it is constitutional or not. This is provide for in Article 26°1°1 of the

A barrister appointed on behalf of the Attorney General argues for the bill and a barrister appointed on behalf of the court argues against it (these barristers must be decided on within 60 days of a reference by the president). If the bill is then struck down by the Supreme Court after article 26 has kicked in, it can never be signed into law. A case I found to help me to really engage in this particular subject matter is: Article 26 and the Employment Equality Bill 1996, In Re [1997] IESC 6. This bill was passed by both houses of the oireachtas in the hope that it would improve employee equality in the workplace on the grounds of various things such as marital status, gender status and sexual-orientation. It was found that Section 6, sub-section 3, Section 33 and Section 37, sub-section 6 of this particular bill were repugnant to the constitution. I researched Section 6, sub section 3 in particular detail. It provided that where a person is over the age of 65 or under the age of 18 then treating that person more favourably or less favourably than another (whatever that other person's age) shall not be regarded as discrimination on the age ground. This was seen by the Supreme Court as repugnant to article 40 sub section 1 which provides that “All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law. This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of