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THE INCORPORATED LAW SOCIETY OF IRELAND
April 1980
Vol. 74
No.3
Law Reform
Now!
The publication of the first Bill to be drafted by the
Law Reform Commission prompts an enquiry as to the
progress of Law Reform in the Republic in recent years.
The result of any such enquiry will disappoint.
A modern state must inevitably be hogtied by
antiquated legislation. We need urgently a review of many
aspects of our law -
our Land Law and our
Conveyancing Law (last
comprehen~ively
reviewed in
1881) are both out dated. The £1,000.00 awarded to a
widow for mental distress under the Civil Liability Act,
and the penalties laid down for various minor offences
need to be brought into line with modern money values
(and then indexed ?). Our Licensing Laws and Local
Government Law should be codified.
There are at present three primary sources of Statute
Law Reform in operation in the State - the Departments
of State, the Statute Law Revision Office and the Law
Reform Commission. Of the Departments of State, it is
the Department of Justice which is the most likely to
generate reform of "Lawyers Law". How has it fared in
recent years? Not well, for the Department seems not to
have had a coherent programme of Law Reform since
that prepared while the present Taoiseach was Minister in
the early 1960's. Reports of the Committee on Court
Practice and Procedure apparently lie unheeded on the
shelves; only a small number of the recommendations
contained in its many reports have been enacted into
Law. Even the Bills which do emerge from the
Department take an inordinate time from their inception
to reach the Statute Book, only partly due to
parliamentary delays. The Landlord and Tenant
(Amendment) Bill 1979 which passed through the Senate
on the 6th May 1980 contained the proposals first
announced by the then Minister for Justice in March
1970. Admittedly, an earlier Bill with similar provisions
was lost on the dissolution of the Oireachtas in 1977 but
that Bill had only been introduced in 1977.
'
The progress of Bills through the Oireachtas is too
stately, except when some crusading zeal seizes it as in
the case of the illconsidered Family Home
Protecti~n
Act
- a piece of window dressing which dodged the issue of
community property in marriage. Who could blame the
Department of Justice for working at a leisurely pace in
drafting Bills which may merely go to make up a back-log
of unattended pending legislation?
We badly need the "special Committee of the house'
system to be used more frequently to deal with Bills which
are not controversial in party political terms and can
be
truly considered "Law Reform" Bills. Such Bills as come
from the
La~
Reform Commission should
be
handled by
such Comrruttees.
The Statute
La~
Revision Office is, it is under–
~tood, ~ntrusted
with the task of codifying legislation
m certam areas. It does not seem to have been successful
in getting any of its products introduced in the Oireachtas
for some time.
. The
~aw
Reform Commission is perhaps the greatest
dlsappomtment, greatest because of the high hopes with
which it
~as
launched and
be~a~se
of the wealth of legal
talent
.av~able
to
~e
Commission. In its four years of
operatIOn It has published seven Working Papers (three of
which were completed within the first eighteen months of
the Commission's operation), one Report (reports to the
end of 1978 and 1979 are awaited) and nothing has been
heard of the second topic referred to the Commission on
the 3rd December 1975 - "the Law relating to the
Domicile of Married Women". Such a pace of work is not
acceptable.
The methodology of the Commission is too
- Continued on
p.
6
Executive Editor: Seamus L. O'Kelly.
Editorial Board: John F. Buckley, Charles R. M. Meredith, Michael V. O'Mahony, Maxwell Sweeney.
Printed
by
the Leinster Leader Limited, Naas, Co. Kildare.
The views expressed in this publication, save where otherwise indicated, are the views of the
contributors and not necessarily the views of the Council of the Society.
Published at Blackhall Place, Dublin 7.