The Gazette 1984

GAZETTE

JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 1984

BOOK REVIEW Judgments of the Court of Criminal Appeal 1924-1978, by Gerard L. Frewen, B.L., Dip. Eur., Law, Registrar of the High Court (Dublin: The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland, 1982. 619pp. £37.50). The introduction of the Criminal Legal Aid Act in 1962 and its subsequent implementation in 1965 did not then make any great impact on the legal profession. By 1970 only a small number of solicitors were on the Legal Aid panels and in some areas no solicitors were available for legally aided criminal defence work. Today the situation is fundamentally different. Criminal practice forms a significant part of the work of the legal profession while criminal trials and related matters take up an increasing amount of court time. There are a number of reasons for these changes. One is the growth in crime. The report of the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána on crime published in June, 1982, noted that the number of indictable offences reported per year had risen from 38,000 in 1972 to just under 90,000 in 1981. A second reason more directly bearing on the involvement of the legal profession was the decision of the Supreme Court in The State (Healy) -v- Donoghue [1976] I.R. 325, which made it obligatory on the courts to inform accused persons of limited means of their right to legal aid. A third reason is the increase in fees payable to solicitors and barristers under the Act. Unfortunately, the increased importance of criminal practice has not been matched by any noticeable advance in publications on criminal law. Mr. Frewen's work is, therefore, particularly welcome. Part 1 is devoted to 75 judgments of the Court of Criminal Appeal which are published for the first time. These represent one-third of the unpublished reports of the Court and were chosen by Mr. Frewen after consideration of all the unpublished material. Practitioners need no longer suspect that important judgments may still be lurking somewhere among the files in the Office of the Court of Criminal Appeal. No doubt the present and future Registrars of that court will be grateful to Mr. Frewen! Part 2 comprises judgments of the Court which have already appeared in the Irish Reports. It is useful to have these in one Volume. The detailed index will be of great assistance to the Judiciary and practitioners and also provides some help in relation to cross-reference. While not a work that solicitors will regularly produce in the District Court, a familiarity with these judgments will greatly benefit solicitors in criminal practice. The status of dock identification, identification where witnesses have been shown photographs, identity parades, aspects of the hearsay rule are all dealt with in judgments reported in this book. These matters are frequently relevant in District Court criminal trials. The past 5 years have seen a number of major judgments from the Court of Criminal Appeal. A Supplement incorporating these judgments will go to press shortly and is expected to be available by mid-1984. Meanwhile, both Mr. Frewen and the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland are to be congratulated for producing this excellent and much needed book. • Garrett Sheehan

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Books Received Employment Appeals Decisions — 1979. Government Publications Sale Office, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 £2.47. (Prl. 1430) The second volume in what is intended to be a series of reports of important decisions by the Employment Appeals Tribunal under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 has been published by the Department of Labour. The first volume covered cases heard by the Tribunal in 1977 and 1978 while the new volume covers 1979. The decisions cover such points as what constitutes conduct justifying dismissal, the requirements of natural justice to be observed before deciding on dismissal and whether dismissal ostensibly on the grounds of redundancy was, in fact, the real reason. The Minister for Labour commenting on the publication, said that the response to the first volume had shown there was wide public interest in the decisions of the Tribunal under the Unfair Dismissals Act and that it was intended to have this volume of leading cases up- dated at regular intervals. •