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VOL. 87 NO. 2
B 0
JULY/AUGUST 1993
Hotel, Restaurant & Public
House Law
By Marc McDonald, Butterworths,
1992, paperback, £40.00.
Marc McDonald BCL BL M Litt, is a
lecturer in law in the School of Hotel,
Tourism and Catering Management at
the Dublin Institute of Technology,
Cathal Brugha Street. He has limited
his area of enquiry into the laws and
authorisations relevant to establishing
a hospitality business. In so doing the
text does not deal with many areas of
applied law, as the writer is happy that
they are better dealt with elsewhere,
for instance planning, clubs (although
there is reference to night clubs) and
conveyancing aspects. Indeed the
licensing practitioner will usually
reach for Woods in order to assemble
the nuts and bolts of licensing
procedures.
This book is not so much nuts and
bolts as flesh and blood to the
enquiring mind on the law of
hospitality in Ireland.
The author charts a course that will
lead us into the realms of registration
of hotels, food premises and liquor
licenses. He leads us through the
labyrinth of the granting of new
publican's licenses. On our route we
take a look at renewals and transfers.
Public dancing, public music and
singing, and music and film copyright
licenses are all mapped and magnified.
Mr. McDonald brings us further and
examines passing off and hospitality
identity indicators. While the case law
in this area appears to be almost
exclusively foreign, one wonders
whether the recent indigenous case
involving the "Muckross" Hotels
would have had an influence, had the
timing of the publication been a little
different.
We are offered a generous menu of
statutes and cases, although the index
would hardly whet the appetite.
The meat is spiced with some
European flavour as we ponder on the
author's reflection that most EC States
do not appear to operate compulsory
hotel registration schemes. This
approach would appear to assume that
variations in hotel standards can
satisfactorily be dealt with by a
sufficiently broadly based information
system rather than compulsory
registration involving a minimum
statutory definition of what a hotel is
or should be. One could even wash
this down with the intoxicating
speculation that the present Irish
approach might endanger the proper
functioning of the common market in
hotel services in the European
Community since it could deny to,
say, a French or Spanish chain of
hotels the freedom to operate a hotel
in Ireland, because it might not satisfy
the statutory definition here of a hotel.
There is plenty here to digest, but not
too much to bewilder the guest or
confuse the consumer.
To be recommended.
Justin McKenna
Law and Liberty in Ireland
By Anthony Whelan, (editor), Oak
Tree Press, Dublin, in association with
Trinity College Law School, 1993,
202 pp, hardback £19.95, paperback
£12.95.
A profound transformation has
occurred in the law schools of Irish
universities during the last two
decades. Full-time lawyers have
facilitated unparalleled opportunities
for research and inquiry, making
possible a service to the legal
community and society at large which
would have been inconceivable only
three decades ago. The evidence of
curriculum reform, multiplication of
courses and improved libraries, is
impressive. The results of this
expansion of effort are already
showing in the lawyers who have
gained from the new opportunities.
One of the university's major
purposes is to advance knowledge.
Accordingly, the university is often
responsible for the creation of "new
languages" as much as it is for
instruction in the ancient tongues.
[The writer uses languages and
tongues here in the metaphorical
sense]. To a certain extent, the
university, as an engine of change in
modern society, has a responsibility to
take part in the solution of problems
that touch upon the general welfare of
our society. In his perceptive
introduction to
Law and Liberty in
Ireland,
Anthony Whelan, the editor,
emphasises this point by noting that
the Law School and the College must
be open to the views and assessment
of the community which they
ultimately serve. Accordingly, this
book specifically addresses some of
the problems that now touch upon the
welfare of Irish society.
Law and Liberty in Ireland
is a book
of essays which grew out of a series
of public lectures given by members
of the Trinity College Law School in
Michaelmas Term of 1992. The
lecture series and the book were
conceived of as the Law School's
contribution to the quartercentenary of
Trinity College's foundation in 1592.
It is appropriate in this short notice to
state that law has been the subject of
study in Trinity College virtually
since the College's foundation. By the
middle of the 19th century there were
three professors of law. But such
teaching was part-time and non-
specialist and essentially an adjunct to
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