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be registered unless the purchaser/lessee also lodged a
letter from their office consenting to the registration of
the lease.
I saw one of the legal assistants and pointed out that
the mortgagees had been paid off and that there was a
note on the folio cancelling the inhibition which had
been put on the folio and formally demanded that my
client's papers be accepted for registration. This was
refused after the Registrar had been consulted in the
matter.
I have had to take back my client's papers and have
now to write to the lessors solicitors asking them to
arrange that the mortgagees solicitors withdraw their
letter to the Registrar and make the Land Certificate
available to the lessors. I do not know how long I will
have to wait.
The reason for the above impasse is that apparently
if a solicitor lodges a Land Certificate whether for the
registered owner or a mortgagee for a particular trans-
action or with a direction or general inhibition no note
of this inhibition or whatever is attached to the folio
therefore no solicitor knows of it until he lodges his
client's papers for registration. This could lead to a
very serious situation for any solicitor.
I have today given instructions that no dealing in
which the Land Registry is involved is to be completed
until the original Land Certificate has been produced
to me or inspected in the Land Registry.
I am writing this letter to you as a warning to other
solicitors of what can happen.
P.S.—I have never had much faith in the Land
Registry Folio, now it is clear it may not be relied on.
Yours faithfully,
Bergin and Burke, Solicitors,
118 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.
Dear Sir,
The strong and fully-justified criticisms by Senator
Robinson and Dr. O'Higgins of the Offences against
the State (Amendment) Act, 1972, as reported (January
18th), omit two vital points.
The Act allows the opinion of a Garda officer to be
"evidence" of certain criminal offences. The O Bradaigh
case shows that a man can be convicted when the
only
evidence is the "opinion" of a garda. That case, there-
fore, goes much further than the Act and treats an
unsubstantiated and uncorroborated opinion as proof
beyond reasonable doubt, the standard of proof re-
quired in criminal cases. Whether correct in law or not,
ths is an even more objectionable interpretation of the
Act than was feared.
Since the Act makes it possible to jail a man on the
bare opinion of the gardai, without any trial as the
word is normally understood outside totalitarian coun-
tries, it has in effect introduced internment by another
name. But it is internment by the Executive with a
veneer of respectability provided by the judiciary, the
judges have been unfairly saddled with the duty of
being a cloak for Executive action, thereby comprising
their constitutional independence.
The present Government has a disgraceful record of
weakness and failure to enforce the existing laws against
the I.R.A. But it has also been responsible for the most
insidiously objectionable laws in the history of the
State.
Anyone concerned with civil liberties and the rule of
law should support any organisation which will cam-
paign to have the 1972 Act repealed, or all the Offences
against the State Acts limited to operate for a year at
a time.
Yours, etc.,
John Temple Lang (Dublin).
Judge O'Dalaigh explains Role of European Court
Continued from page 71
who was also a great European, George Gavan Duffy,
has a phrase somewhere in one of his judgments—it
may have been in the famous Ballybunion case—in
which he refers to the Common Law as—what was it?
—"A rude monument to the ancestors of another
people." The Common Law in Ireland exists with and
subject to the Constitution, which is a very important
modification, I think, because one of the principles of
the Common Law is the supremacy of Parliament. One
of the principles of our Constitution is that Parliament
is subject to the Constitution, and there are various
guarantees of personal and other rights that are of great
importance to Irish citizens, if they look to enforce
them. So that an Irish lawyer's contribution in this,
I think, would be different from the contribution of an
English or Scots lawyer; he comes more with an Ameri-
can outlook, if one wants approximate terms, which is
really wider ranging and less confined, I would think,
with great respect to my new colleagues on the other
side, then perhaps their approach. A good friend and
colleague in the court has spoken of this as a synthesi-
sation of national laws. This is what the court is endea-
vouring to do—not to rub out one approach or other,
but to harmonise and synthesise the various national
approaches, always bearing in mind what must always
be a supreme principle for any judge, that justice shall
be done.
—The Irish Times
(12 January 1973)
NOTICE
In the Editorial note on page 41 of the February
Gazette
it was erroneously stated that the Editor
was prepared to publish suitable comments quali-
fying the legislation if submitted. This should
have read "suitable comments about the legis-
lation".
73