The word at the forefront of everyone’s mind for the next two weeks will be ‘referendum’ – whether one is required or, from a more jaundiced perspective, whether the government has leveraged the Treaty text sufficiently to evade one. In this blog, I want to explore why even the most careerist of us should not(…)
The extraordinary speed of events in Brussels make forming a legal opinion on the need for constitutional referendum challenging, but based on the information available, we can begin a preliminary identification of the major issues involved in what is frankly revolutionary step which swaps political complications for legal complications. At least the markets may be sufficiently(…)
The student Law Society of University College Cork will host a keynote address from Michael Mansfield QC, tomorrow, Wednesday, 7.30, in Boole 4, UCC. Michael Mansfield is a prestigious and prolific British barrister, who has represented defendants in criminal trials, appeals and inquiries in some of the most controversial cases the UK has seen. These(…)
What Just Happened? President Abbas has submitted the application for a granting of Member State of the United Nations status to Palestine. The Secretary General has forwarded the application to UN Security Council which is the body which initially adjudicates on its validity. Under the UN Charter, the admission of a new Member state is ‘effected(…)
The Response of the Holy See to Ireland is a dense document defined as much by its omissions as by its technical terminology. Here, I want to evaluate its engagement with the central issue: the degree to which the bureaucratic architecture of the Church facilitated or failed to tackle abuse, by omission, by cultural practice(…)
In the aftermath of the publication of the Report into Child Sexual Abuse in the diocese of Cloyne, the status and nature of Irish diplomatic relations with the Holy See have come into sharp focus. The exceptionally strong findings that the Holy See’s dismissal of the Irish Church’s framework guidelines as a “study document” was(…)
The past week, predictably, has seen many attempts to link the locating of Osama Bin Laden to the programme of torture and “enhanced interrogation” introduced by the Bush administration, with the most concerted attempt being Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. This has elicited the usual philosophical responses, none more eloquent than(…)
- Human Rights are luxuries we can no longer afford. – Human Rights are irrelevant, we have got to raise our competitiveness. – We all want to protect the vulnerable. – Human Rights are just special extra entitlements, we’ve to think of the whole community now. The above list is an attempt to summarise some(…)
In the past number of days, the possibility of renegotiating the IMF/EU bailout deal has come to dominate the election campaign. The signalling of intent by parties has been highly choreographed but the first performances beckon in March, a time when this country may have uncertainties of leadership and when the key foundation-laying of the(…)
The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, has now committed to holding a Dáil vote on the IMF/EU bailout, following a Fianna Fáil parliamentary vote. It is important that this decision is seen a manoeuvre designed to extract political advantage. There appears no claim by the Government that it now believes that aspects of the Memorandum of Understanding constitute a(…)
