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GAZETTE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1995
to read as it is small and on bright
white paper.
The authors readily admit their dislike
for areas such as infants contracts and
gaming contracts and therefore the
treatment o f these topics is limited.
The authors complain of these areas as
being shunned or being educationally
incoherent. However, the Supreme
Court decision is
Flynn
v
Deneiffe
clarified Irish Law regarding the tests
to be applied in deciding whether a
project amounts to a lottery and the
judgment deserves to be quoted in the
Materials book. Far from being an
arcane area, the subject is one which
is important for any practitioner
advising advertising agencies,
marketing companies or commercial
clients seeking to expand their
customer base. Likewise, the area of
infant contracts while frustrating in
terms o f endeavouring to achieve a
c ommon thread o f logic in the various
judgments, needs to be understood in
its intricacies. This is particularly so
for those who advise in the
entertainment area, an increasingly
important part o f Irish e c onomic life.
A practitioner cannot refuse to give
advice to a film production company
which wishes to engage the services
o f a child actor or to a 17 year old
musician presented with a recording
contract simply on the basis that the
law to our mind does not make sense.
The international nature o f Irish trade
requires that practitioners have a
knowledge of what admittedly might
to termed to be private international
law but nevertheless is important for
contract. No mention is made o f the
applicable legislation which
implements the
Rome Convention
on
the Law applicable to contractual
obligations.
My carping should not take away from
the tremendous work which has gone
into the book. It will be a very useful
addition to the library o f any
practitioner as well as being a handy
companion for Robert C l a r k e 's
Contract Law in Ireland.
One of the most helpful chapters is
that in relation to restraint o f trade.
The authors have successfully
combined judicial decisions, statutory
provisions and rulings o f the
Competition Authority to give an
integrated approach to the topic. The
coverage given is extremely
extensive, amounting to sixty eight
pages with helpful notes added by the
authors in each section of their
treatment o f the topic. Competition
Law is quickly developing and the
Competition Authority has issued a
number o f Category Licenses since
Contract and Materials was produced.
Another area which receives extensive
treatment from the authors is that of
damages. Chapter 19 is structured so
that one considers the reasons for the
award o f damages in a breach of
contract situation before considering
possible heads o f loss. Consideration
o f loss o f expectation damages is
candidly entitled "assessment of
damages as guess work". As well as
relevant cases, the authors have also
included useful extracts from various
articles, such as O ' D r i s c o l l 's article
on the rule in
Bain v Fothergill
and
various extracts from
McGregor
on
Damages.
Kevin Hoy
The Irish Statutes
1 3 1 0 - 1 8 00
(Facsimile reprint of the 1885
revised edition, with a special
introductory essay by
W.N.
Osborough), Publisher: The Round
Hall Press, Dublin, 848 pp,
hardback, £120.
In 1885 the Irish Of f i ce at
Westminister published an edition of
the statutes passed in the parliaments
held in Ireland between 1 3 10 (the
third year o f the reign of
King
Edward
IT)
and 1800, the year o f the Act of
Union, the third article o f which
provided that "the said united
kingdom be represented in one and the
same parliament".
The Irish Statute Law Revision Acts
o f 1878 and 1 8 79 had clarified what
enactments "may be regarded as spent
or [as having] ceased to be in force
otherwise than by express and specific
repeal by Parliament or [as having] by
lapse o f time and change of
circumstances, b e c ame unnecessary"
and had drawn attention to the
necessity of clarifying the status of
statutes, ordinances and other
materials o f the parliament. The work
in the drafting o f those Acts would
have facilitated the preparation of
the edition.
What is now republished is a record of
the statute law, as specifically adopted
by Irish parliaments, in force in
Ireland then. The utility, in present
day terms, o f most of the statutes now
reprinted ( of course many more of
which have since been repealed in the
course o f the next century) is rather
marginal, although the Act for
Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries of
1695 is o f course still o f relevance,
and the Oireachtas earlier this summer
repealed the 1 7 99 " Act for the Better
Regulation of S t o c kb r ok e r s" enacted,
with a purpose which is recognisable
2 0 0 years later, to secure that "proper
persons only will be permitted to act
as stockbrokers".
The 1885 revised edition does not
include the text o f statutes that were
then clearly spent or had been
expressly repealed at any time up to
1885, but does contain a most useful
list o f all the statutes which had been
enacted by parliament in Ireland
between 1 3 10 and 1800.
The volume might best be seen as a
collection of "curious and authentic
documents in the public history of this
kingdom", in words used by the editor
of an earlier edition of statutes first
published in 1765.
What is o f greatest value is the
I introduction, in about 2 0 pages, by
Professor
W.N. Osborough.
It is a
| masterly summation of the legislative
history o f Ireland up to the Union and
o f the status o f legislation enacted at
Westminister up to 1782 which had
application also in Ireland, and also of
; the background to previous editions of
Irish statutes. B e f o re the first o f these
was published early in the seventeenth
century
King James
/ had complained
that trying to discover the state of
; Irish law "was no better than walking
in darkness".
246