THE HIGH COURT
Record No: 840P/2005
BETWEEN:
SHELL E & P IRELAND LIMITED
Plaintiff
And
PHILIP MCGRATH, JAMES PHILBIN, WILLIE CORDUFF,
MONICA MULLER, BRID MCGARRY, PETER SWEETMAN
Defendants
And
THE MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS MARINE AND NATURAL RESOURCES, IRELAND AND THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Defendants to the counterclaim of second and fifth defendants
Update (17th March 2010)
1. On 18th and 19th November 2008, Judge Laffoy heard the application, on motion, of the State to determine as a preliminary issue whether the 2nd and 5th Defendants are precluded from raising “public law issues”.
2. McGarr Solicitors act for Brendan Philbin and Brid McGarry, the 2nd and 5th Defendants. Their counsel are Lord Dan Brennan QC and Mark Dunne BL. The Chief State Solicitor acts for the Minister, Ireland and the AG. Their Counsel are James Connolly SC and Charles Meenan SC. Eugene F Collins act for SEPIL. Its counsel are Patrick Hanratty SC and Declan McGrath BL.
3. The court has decided (judgment delivered on 4th March 2010) that the 2nd and 5th defendants are NOT precluded from raising “public law issues”.
4. The proceedings commenced in April 2005, when Shell E & P Ireland Ltd. (”SEPIL”), issued plenary summons proceedings against the defendants. Mr. Philbin was committed to prison for 3 months, effectively, on the application of SEPIL on the grounds that he had breached an injunction restraining him from preventing SEPIL from entering his land.
5. In the events that have happened, SEPIL applied for and received the leave of the court to discontinue its claims against the defendants. This happened after SEPIL had received the defences of the defendants and the 2nd and 5th Defendants had counterclaimed against SEPIL and successfully joined the Minister and Ireland and the AG as further defendants to the counterclaim. SEPIL’s discontinuance did not end the counterclaim. The counterclaim is substantial. As against the Minister, Ireland and the AG it claims that certain Compulsory Acquisition Orders made by the Minister regarding the land of the defendants are invalid. It also claims that a consent allegedly made by the Minister in favour of SEPIL, to construct a pipeline over the defendants’ land is invalid.
6. The Minister, Ireland and the AG asserted that these are “public law issues”. They asserted that issues like these can be challenged only under the procedure set out in Order 84 of the Rules of the Superior Courts. They asserted that, that being so, those claims of the defendants are late. They asserted that the claims, to be admissible, should have been made within the time limits of 3 or 6 months (at most) after the making of the CAOs and the consent.
7. SEPIL supported the State parties in their submissions and position.
8. The defendants denied they are confined by the provisions of Order 84 and/or its “time limits”. They said that Order 84 is not an exclusive procedure; that it cannot be used to shut out the hearing of claims against the State where the State has wronged citizens, particularly with regard to the private property of the citizen. They said, consequently, that the counterclaim should proceed to a full hearing on its merits.
9. The matter has been adjourned for mention before Judge Laffoy to 18th March 2010.
McGarr Solicitors use Macintosh computers; that is, we use computers with the Apple operating system on them.
The beginning of this was the Macintosh SE which introduced me to computer use in or about 1987.
For me, then, the database program in Appleworks was the most valuable element of the machine and its software. Despite the passage of time I have not found a database program as useful as that, despite its limitations, which were obvious.
Those limitations brought me to think about relational databases; in short, to look into the world of mathematicians and nerds, a place for which I was and am constitutionally unsuited. (Ten plus fifteen is twenty-six, right?).
Bill Gates of Microsoft owned or controlled the alternative machine. For me, it was’nt at the races.
So, now Bill Gates has retired. I endorse his future plans; I decry his past. Without him the better system, the Mac, would be everywhere.
Everywhere would have the benefits of an aesthetic and economical approach to computing. Unlike Bill Gates’ system, one would not encounter a “counter-intuitive? element in an interface.
Which is not to say that native wit is everything in the learning of a Mac program; it is not.
But in Bill Gates’ system it would have been an impossibility to use Pagemeker to publish a book, as I have done, with the program written in Italian for the Italian market.
Ciao, Bill.
Ireland has vetoed the Lisbon Treaty.
Or has it? What is a veto? More particularly, what is a veto in the European Union?
Ireland has previously cast a veto (in the EU Council of Ministers) and it was denied that it had that effect. That is, it was treated as a dissent, not as a block.
See HERE for details.
The defeat of the Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland is not a rejection of the European Union. However, the response of the European Union may indeed lead to a rejection of the EU. Only a Union based on law can attract and hold the allegiance of the people of Europe. The legal basis of the European Union lies in the treaties. Under the treaties Ireland’s assent to the Lisbon Treaty is a requirement to bring it into force.
To say that implementing the Lisbon Treaty was “going to be difficult” as Christine Lagarde the French Finance Minister did in Korea is to imply that the European Union is not an entity built on law.
To press ahead as President Sarkozy and Gordon Brown propose is to subscribe to the same implication. To propose a “two-speed” Europe (see HERE) is a proposal to abandon the European Union, a legally questionable idea.
The City of Derry wants to change its name. Actually the Derry City Council wants to change the name of the city, but the courts have ruled that they can’t do that because Charles II of England changed the name of the city from Derry to Londonderry by charter in 1652. (Note that the Council had changed its own name). The court went on to advance a questionable proposition; that the name could be changed by a change in the law, or by the Queen of England on receipt of a petition to that end.
At risk of contradiction by experts in the British constitution (has that been located yet?) it is most unlikely that the Queen would claim such a role or welcome the delivery of the petition regardless of her views on the two competing names, or her predecessor, Charles II.
A change in the law is a better suggestion.
The Law Society of Ireland had its name changed under Section 4 of the Solicitors (Amendment) Act 1994. The Society was formerly known as the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. Like the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, it is an incorporated body under charter (in the case of the Law Society, a charter from Queen Victoria in 1854). These two chartered bodies are unusual in Ireland in not being semi-state bodies; not being subject to the provisions of the Companies Acts 1963-2003 and not being subject to oversight by the Oireachtas or, effectively, the Competition Authority (as currently operating).
Changing your name is normally charged with meaning. The trick is to find the meaning.
Kristian von Hornsleth made a general offer to the residents of a village in Uganda to gift them each a pig or a sheep if they adopt his name. Edith Hornsleth Babirye defended this arrangement (relationship?) following receipt of her pig, which she plans to use to pay school fees.
If you are in Illinois and want to be a judge – change your name. (To “O?Brien? it seems). Fred Rhine, look at this.
Minister of State Tony Killeen TD did not change his name but he has pleaded, effectively, a nomenclature malfunction. He denies responsibility for appeals in his name to Michael McDowell SC TD, for the early release of a murderer and, separately, a child rapist. The appeals were generated by a system established by Mr. Killeen; calculated to benefit him; written on his notepaper; purporting to be signed by him. A court would, on evidence like that, in a suitable case, convict him of conspiracy at least.
If he wants to change his name he needs to lodge a Deed Poll to that effect in the Central Office of the High Court.
The Law Society of Ireland didn’t have it that easy, it seems.
The Conveyancing Committee is comprised of working solicitor members (working in private practice) brought together by the Law Society of Ireland to give guidance, and set procedures, in the resolution of questions that may arise in conveyancing transactions. Conveyancing is what lawyers do when transferring or mortgaging land or buildings.
The members are unpaid for their work. They are, of necessity, deeply involved in conveyancing practice and, of course, earn their living from doing so. They tend not to belong to the category of solicitor who seeks election to the Council of the Law Society.
The Conveyancing Committee oversees the production of the various editions of the Law Society General Conditions of Sale. These form part (hopefully) of every conveyancing sale transaction.
It also oversees the production of the Law Society’s Requisitions on Title. These form an indispensable check-list of questions to be answered by the vendor or mortgagee in a conveyancing transaction.
The Conveyancing Committee is an important body; its work is known to the legal profession (and the judiciary) but unsung in public.
I have a soft spot for the Committee, having found no response to my assertion to colleagues that Professor Farrand cracked jokes in his book “Contract & Conveyance?; dry jokes, admittedly.
It’s lonely, being a conveyancer.
The Richmond Hospital in North Brunswick St. has a new phase of life as a District Court building.
It’s a fine two story building of red brick and terracotta with two wings on either side of a fine staircase to the entrance.
Court 52 is clearly occupying what was once a hospital ward; broad and well lit, with gracious ceiling height in proportion to the size of the space.
The structure inspires confidence in its developers, the medical men (and women?) who brought it into being. There would have been no surgical swabs left unforgotten by those people in a patient after the scalpel wound was sewn up. They also believed in the germ theory of disease.
This sense of carefulness and planning can be seen in the title documents of the premises. I acted for a potential unsuccessful purchaser when it ceased to be a hospital and was offered for sale.
The Hospital trustees had been very careful over a long period of time and never failed to use the services of a good surveyor or cartographer. In addition they had been compelled to assemble the site painstakingly, each sliver of land (particularly on the road frontage) being carefully mapped and associated with its title deeds.
Again, thanks to the same people, it now helps to bring a civilized tone to what can be a stressful process (even for the lawyers).
Before 200 asylum seekers in direct provision accommodation in Limerick/Clare commenced a hunger strike (Irish Times 30/1/07) did the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform receive any prior inkling of their complaints?
The complaints are, inter alia;
a) In meals the “customers? find hair strands; pieces of broken plastic and particles of shells.
b) One toilet roll a week is allocated. Experience, shows this is inadequate.
c) Lack of cleanliness
This is a no-brainer. If it were a prison, the visiting committee would vouch the facts. The Department has been criticised previously for whimsical variation in the quality of direct provision.
The Department has, with regard to children, acknowledged its obligations to ensure that proper provision be made under its schemes or systems.
Does anyone ever answer for this kind of situation?
This posting is a blatant act of plagiarism.
It is also a paean to the French Big Brother awards 2006 and French politicians, whose mission seems to include bringing laughter to the world, or the francophone section of it in any event, surely with the best of intentions.
The awards, as the title suggests, goes to the persons promoting acts or policies generally familiar to the readers of Orwell’s “1984?.
Nicholas Sarkozy was disqualified from admission to the awards this year, having won too often in the past and generally showing a superior talent to his fellow politicians in the running. His innate sense of contempt for the privacy of his fellow citizens and his dedication to spying on them were traits hard to beat, and so he was excluded.
1. In the “State? category the winner had compiled police records on citizens on foot of suspicion. He then deprived them of jobs on the basis of the “police records?
2. Sony-BMG installed spy software in their CDs, to spy on the customer purchasers of the CDs.
3. The Mayor of Ploërmel won an award for introducing a system for citizens to denounce other citizens and for installing 50 video cameras to watch a locality with no public order or crime problems.
4. Frédéric Péchenard won for his work in promoting the genetic filing of the entire population, arguing that innocent persons would consequently be free of suspicion.
5. Minister of Justice Pascal Clément, (what a surprise) won for, inter alia, his “determination to imprison and control? (is this a French idea?).
Would the French laugh at our politicians if they received our reports? Appropriate reports in the comment section please.
We have commented previously on the ePassport and its lack of security.
See the attached opinion of the EU Article 29 Data Protection Working Party on RFID tags in passports and its recommendations for steps to precede the introduction of the chipped passports.
We cannot see that Ireland took any notice of the Working Party’s recommendations, not to speak of, inter alia, the concerns of Civil Liberties groups in the USA and Canada.
For example, what State agencies, besides the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform, have access to the ePassport database? The Garda Siochana?
If we are not close to Boston or Berlin, with what place are we close?
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