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GAZETTE
NOVEMBER 1991
Law Reporting Council
celebrates One Hundred
Years
The Law Reporting Council of
Ireland has celebrated the first one
hundred years of its existence. It
was in February, 1891 that the Law
Reporting Council was registered
under the Companies Acts then in
force. However, the history of the
Council goes back much further.
Records show that it existed in one
form or another since about 1868
and the Irish Reports, the principal
work of the Council, have been pro-
duced and published since 1838.
The Law Reporting Council may be
described as a "joint venture"
which includes senior members of
the Judiciary, the Attorney General,
Senior Counsel, Junior Counsel,
the Director General of the Law
Society and members of the Law
Society. The members of the
Society on the Council are Michael
O'Mahony, Michael Staines and
Eamonn Hall.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice
T.
Finlay
launched the
Quinquennial
Digest 1984/1988
in the King's
Inns on Thursday, October 17,
1991. The Chief Justice stated that
it was a fortuitous coincidence that
the Council of Law Reporting for
Ireland hosted a reception for the
launch of the Quinquennial Digest
in 1991 - the centenary of the
year in which the present council
was incorporated.
The Chief Justice stated the
principal work of the Council was
the publication of the
Irish Reports
which contain the official records of
the important judgments of the
Supreme Court, the High Court and
the Court of Criminal Appeal. The
importance of these official reports
in a political system firmly rooted in
the rule of law can never be under-
rated. The Chief Justice stated that
our legal system, like most other
common law countries, depended
heavily on precedent and in
particular on the law as it was to be
found in the judgments of earlier
cases. Therefore, it was easy to see
how essential it was to have a
reliable system of reporting such
judgments.
The Chief Justice stated that in
keeping with such expectations of
reliability, the
Irish Reports
have
been produced over the years to a
consistently high quality. There had
been complaints in the past at the
slowness with which the reports
were published, but the authors of
such criticism should remember
that because the work was an
official record for posterity, quality
couldn't be easily sacrificed solely
in the interest of punctuality.
The aim of the Council, stated the
Chief Justice, was to marry a high
standard of quality with an efficient
and reasonably up-to-date service
for its subscribers. To a large extent
this had been achieved by the
improvement of the last eight
years. This was borne out by com-
parison to previous years. The 1983
reports had about 390 pages and
were produced some years in
arrears. The 1991
Irish Reports
will
comprise one. thousand t wo
hundred pages in two volumes, the
first of which will be produced
before this Christmas i.e. in 1991,
the same year as its title.
The improvement in publishing the
Irish Reports
was due, according to
the Chief Justice, in large part, to
the members of the Council in
these past eight years. A particular
mention was made of the Chairmen
in this period,
Noel Macdonafd
and
David But/er,
both now sadly de-
ceased, and the present Chairman,
Eoghan Fitzsimons,
SC. Credit was
also due to the present Vice-
Chairman
Michael McDowell,
SC,
Secretary,
Carroll Moran,
Editor,
Sunniva McDonagh,
BL, Business
Manager,
Michael McC/oskey
and
Compositor,
Kathy Keily.
Apart from the reports, the
Council's other periodic publication
is the Digest. The Digest contains
a precis of all the cases reported
between certain years and is, thus,
an invaluable reference book for
lawyers. Up to now the Council has
published seven Digests containing
cases going, in unbroken sequence,
from 1894 to 1983.
The
Quinquennial Digest
1984/1988
was the eighth digest and covered
the years between 1984 and 1988.
It contained, in over 1,200 columns,
synopses of all cases reported in
those five years in the
Irish Reports
and in the
Irish Law Reports
Monthly.
The Chief Justice stated
that the large size of this book, for
such a relatively short period of five
years, was indicative of the in-
creased volume of reporting in
recent times, compared with years
gone by.
The Digest was started by
Professor
Ted Ryan,
who combined
the role of being a Professor of Law
at University College Cork with that
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