This is a review of online and print sources for Irish legal research. We have included free and subscription services.
Irish sources of law
Legislation
Irish legislation is complex, as it is comprised of the acts of the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) from 1922 onwards and the statutes of any previous parliament that had jurisdiction in Ireland. Previous parliaments included the Parliament of Ireland prior to 1800, the Parliament of England so far as it applied individual statutes to Ireland from approximately 1600 to 1800 and the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1800 to 1922.
Sinéad Curtin
Alice Steen
Sources of legislation
Almost all primary and secondary legislation from 1922 onwards is freely available online on the Irish statute book website (eISB)Footnote 1. It does not include bills or unpublished acts, and statutory instruments are usually published in hard copy some weeks before appearing online. Hard copies of legislation are available on subscription from Government Publications.
Bills are accessible on the Oireachtas website from 1997 onwardsFootnote 2. Iris OifigiúilFootnote 3 is the official State gazette, which provides notification of new acts, bills and statutory instruments. It is freely available online, and also in hard copy on subscription. RSS feeds and services such as www.changedetection.com can also be used to monitor the passage of legislation on the Oireachtas website.
JustisFootnote 4 also includes most primary and secondary legislation from 1999 as enacted, with some earlier legislation from 1922 to 1998 included. This is part of its First Law Irish service. The Justis UK Statutes service can be quite useful for Irish practitioners, as it is the only comprehensive online source of pre-1922 public statutes as enacted. The pre-1922 acts which are still in force in Ireland are usually not available on sources such as Lexis or Westlaw UK, as they are often not in force in the UK or if they are, have been amended significantly. Some pre-1922 acts as enacted are available on BAILIIFootnote 5. Acts of the Irish Parliament prior to 1800 are generally not available online, but have been published in a single volume, the Irish Statutes revised 1310–1800 Footnote 6. Pre-1922 local and personal acts applicable to Ireland are included in a subscription to the UK Local Acts on Justis. They are also held in hard copy in the larger law libraries.
The Constitution of Ireland can be purchased from Government Publications and is also available onlineFootnote 7.
Researching legislation
Having located the legislation, the next tasks for a researcher are usually to check whether the legislation has commenced or has been amended.
Commencement
An act comes into force when signed by the President, unless there is a commencement provision to the contrary. The date of signature is found after the long title of the act, but commencement provisions may appear at the start, end or throughout the legislation in respect of various or all parts. Commencement orders can be found on the eISB websiteFootnote 8 or the Law Society of Ireland's library catalogue, which is available to members only. Subscribers to Westlaw IE can also find commencement information in the Legislation Fastcheck section of the resource. This citator service is updated annually and is also available to purchase on CD. Another method is to search the Iris Oifigiúil online archive by the act title. The archive begins in 2002, but you may find this method useful to verify more recent SIs. It can take some weeks before an SI publicised in the Iris is actually available in hard copy or online.
The Law Society of Ireland Gazette includes overviews of primary and secondary legislation, including commencement provisions. While this can only be as up-to-date as the date of publication, it is a useful free online resourceFootnote 9. Setting up Google alerts for the titles of legislation you have an interest in is another way to obtain commentary and updates.
Amendments to primary legislation
Amendments to acts are listed in the legislation directory section of the eISB. This currently lists amendments made between 1922 and November 2010 to all Irish primary legislation, whenever enacted. Amendments to acts enacted between 1870 and 1922, which are still in force, are also included. Amendments made to pre-1870 legislation before 1922 can be confirmed by consulting the 1921 edition of the Chronological table of the statutes Footnote 10.
To find amendments made since November 2010, a full text search of primary and secondary legislation on the eISB is required. The President's website lists all acts signedFootnote 11, but not all of these acts have been published. Don't presume that an act you cannot view is not law – it usually is! As explained, acts without a commencement provision become law when signed. Where a commencement order is required, it is not unusual for that statutory instrument to be issued before its parent act has been published. At the time of writing, we are still awaiting the publication of Act 31 of 2010, which was signed (and commenced) in November 2010.
To search unpublished acts, you will need to view the corresponding bill on the Oireachtas website. For those unfamiliar with Irish legislation, it can be difficult to identify the relevant bill. Unhelpfully, the site does not indicate that a bill has been enacted until the corresponding act has been published.
Publication of primary legislation has been delayed in recent years because of the legal requirement to translate legislation into Irish before being made available in either Irish or EnglishFootnote 12. This causes great difficulty for legal practitionersFootnote 13. The BIALL Irish Group and others in the legal profession have been calling for this untenable situation to be remedied.
Amendments to secondary legislation
Humphreys' index to Irish statutory instruments Footnote 14 lists amendments to all SIs up to 31 December 1986. Amendments made between 1993 and 2010 to all extant SIs (and acts) are listed in the Legislation Fastcheck service on Westlaw IE. The Law Society's library catalogue also details amendments to SIs from 1997 onwards. Another method is a full text search of the eISB. Some SIs may be missing from the website, so a similar search of alternative sources such as BAILII, Justis or Westlaw IE is advisable.
Amendments made by very recent SIs to primary or secondary legislation may not be included in any of these resources, so a search of recent issues of Iris Oifigiúil is also recommended. Finally, practitioners are advised to check that any amending legislation is actually in force, by using the methods suggested above under commencement.
Consolidated legislation
As you can see, tracing amendments is a rather arduous process. Thankfully, consolidated legislation is available.
The Law Reform Commission has been making great progress in producing restatements in significant subject areas. There are some certified official restatements (which can be relied on in court), dating from 2003 and 2004Footnote 15. There is an ongoing programme of restatement and many more as yet uncertified restatements are available on the Law Reform Commission's websiteFootnote 16. These are unofficial until certified by the Attorney General, but very useful nonetheless. Most of these uncertified restatements are up-to-date to various dates in 2010.
Also useful for research is the Law Reform Commission's classified list of legislation in IrelandFootnote 17. This classifies extant post-1922 legislation under 36 subject headings. A recent Commission report on the legislation directoryFootnote 18 details the current position of the Irish statute book, restatement project and provides recommendations for reform. This is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the Irish legal system and Irish legal resources.
Legislation is also consolidated on the subscription service, BetterRegulationFootnote 19. Practice areas include banking and financial services, company law and pensions. An employment law module is under development. It consolidates primary and secondary legislation, but there are gaps in the coverage of secondary legislation. Not the most user-friendly of databases, though we are expecting a revamp of this service later in the year.
Court rules are consolidated on the Courts service websiteFootnote 20 and in Round Hall's consolidations of court rules, published in hard copy in looseleaf format and online on Westlaw IE. Practice directions can also be found on the Courts service website.
Numerous publications consolidate Irish legislation. The published consolidations offer added value over the free services, as many of them are annotated. For example, Round Hall's court rules provide case summaries and commentary for each order. Round Hall also publishes looseleaf consolidations of Irish criminal legislation, road traffic law, local government law and employment legislation, amongst others. These are also available online, as part of a subscription to Westlaw IE. Clarus Press publications include consolidated licensing legislation and consolidated landlord and tenant legislation.
Another recommended text is the consolidation of company legislation from Bloomsbury ProfessionalFootnote 21. Tax legislation is consolidated in their tax annuals series and they are launching an online version of this and some of their other Irish titles later this yearFootnote 22. Their Irish tax publications are also available online on the Lexis Irish tax service. The Irish Taxation Institute publishes its own tax annuals in hard copy and online on TaxFindFootnote 23.
Caselaw
Sources of reported and unreported judgments
Currently, there are four active series of law reports, the most important being the general series, the Irish Reports and Irish Law Reports Monthly (ILRM). The Irish Reports are published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland and the ILRMs are published by Round Hall. The two specialist series are the Employment law reports, also published by Round Hall and the Irish tax reports, published by Bloomsbury. There is online access to all of these law reports. Westlaw IE includes the ILRMs and Employment law reports. Another significant series on Westlaw IE, although ceased, is the Irish Law Times Reports. The Irish Reports are available online on Justis from 1838. Lexis holds the Irish Reports from 1919 and the Irish tax reports.
Unreported judgments are freely available on the Courts service website and BAILII. Coverage on the Courts website begins in 2001 and on BAILII from 1996. The Supreme Court website also includes judgments from 2001Footnote 24. There are some older unreported judgments from 1933 onwards on all of the sites, except the Courts website. None of these services provides comprehensive coverage of unreported judgments before the mid-2000s. Older unreported judgments, if published, are often only available in hard copy. It's also worth noting that a copy of the signed unreported judgment is still the optimum version for inclusion in a book of authorities in Irish courts. The Law Society of Ireland library can supply such copies to members.
The family law reporting project was a pilot programme to report family law cases in the District, Circuit and High Courts. These cases were published in Family law matters between 2007 and 2009Footnote 25. For criminal law practitioners, the Irish sentencing websiteFootnote 26 provides further case information on sentencing in all Irish courts.
The subscription services offer a wider range of unreported judgments. Lexis includes unreported judgments from 1985 and Justis provides access from 1998, with some older judgments included on both services. Westlaw IE includes unreported judgments from 2002. All of these holdings are incomplete and the free services are updated more frequently.
Unfortunately, none of the subscription or free services offer comprehensive coverage of unreported or reported judgments. However, all services are continually expanding and their coverage is much improved in the last five years.
While a Google search will retrieve a judgment available on the Courts website or BAILII, what cannot be done by solely relying on the free sources is a comprehensive search by subject matter. The IRLIIFootnote 27 website does provide classified lists of leading cases, but they are not complete. For those without access to the subscription services, it helpfully includes the citation for reported cases and links to the unreported version of all cases on BAILII. The Irish digests, abstracting all reported cases, are available in hard copy from the Irish Council of Law Reporting, but the most recent one was published in 2000. The Irish digests are also included in a subscription to the Irish Reports on Justis. JustCite, the citator service from Justis, indexes most Irish reported cases from 1919 and unreported judgments from 1998 onwards, but does not include the ILRMs between 2000 and 2006.
Monitoring caselaw can be done by RSS feeds on IRLII and BAILIIFootnote 28, but the other free sites do not include such a facility at present. However, services like changedetection.com can save time spent repeatedly checking the sites to see if new cases have been added.
Murdoch's Irish legal companionFootnote 29 is an online version of Murdoch's indispensible Dictionary of Irish law Footnote 30. This was last published in 2009, but the online version is more up-to-date. The service is a useful collation of the free services for Irish caselaw and legislation mentioned in this article.
Tribunals and other determinationsFootnote 31
BAILII provides access to decisions of the Information Commissioner, the Competition Authority and the Data Protection Commissioner. Appeal Commissioners' decisions are published by First Law and are available online on TaxFind.
The Employment Appeals Tribunal websiteFootnote 32 includes determinations from mid-2007 and practitioners can be notified by email when new decisions are published. Equality Tribunal decisions can be found onlineFootnote 33 and the Labour Court websiteFootnote 34 provides access to its rulings.
For intellectual property lawyers, the Irish Patent Office website is a very useful resource. It includes decisions from 2003Footnote 35.
Commentary
Articles
Westlaw IE contains the full text of most journals published by Round Hall, such as the Irish law times and the Commercial law practitioner. It provides an email alert service which monitors journal articles in many Irish and UK publications. For those without a subscription to Westlaw IE, it's worth noting that Westlaw UK indexes all of these journals. The IRLII website also indexes Irish journals, including some not covered by Westlaw UK. Another publisher to consider is First Law. A subscription to its journals includes online access. Practice areas covered include arbitration, tax and road traffic law.
For those with an employment law practice, a subscription to Industrial relations news Footnote 36 or Health and safety review Footnote 37 may be worthwhile. Both journals are a good source of news in these areas. Similarly, Legal Island provides regular email updates on employment law to subscribersFootnote 38.
The Irish Times newspaper publishes a weekly law matters column, including case reports, on Mondays during court term time and this is freely available on its websiteFootnote 39. The Sunday Business Post newspaper also has a regular legal columnFootnote 40. The Law Society of Ireland Gazette provides topical articles and summaries of recent cases. The legal update section of the Bar Review Footnote 41 abstracts journal articles and caselaw, classifying them by practice area. It also lists new books, acts and SIs, along with a list of bills in progress.
Useful blogs analysing decisions of the superior courts are Ex Tempore Footnote 42 and Stare Decisis Hibernia Footnote 43. RSS feeds are available for both.
Books
Following consolidation in the Irish publishing market, the main Irish book publishers are now Round Hall, Bloomsbury Professional and Clarus Press. Bloomsbury's Irish land law and Irish tax collections are available online on the Lexis Irish property and Lexis Irish tax services respectively.
If you would like to develop an Irish law library collection, here are some of the titles we would recommend:
Murdoch's dictionary of Irish law Footnote 44
Byrne & McCutcheon on the Irish legal system Footnote 45
Kelly on the Irish Constitution Footnote 46
Clark on contract Footnote 47
McMahon & Binchy on the law of torts Footnote 48
Charleton on criminal law Footnote 49
MacCann, Companies Acts 1963–2009 Footnote 50
Courtney, The law of private companies Footnote 51
Breslin on banking law Footnote 52
Delany & McGrath, Civil procedure in the superior courts Footnote 53
Wylie's Irish land law Footnote 54
Delany, Equity and law of trusts in Ireland Footnote 55
For a more comprehensive search of Irish publications, consult the websites of the publishers mentioned or that of LawBooks IrelandFootnote 56. Some historical titles are freely available through Google books.
Conclusion
Although the development of many free and subscription services in the last ten years have been of great assistance to anyone researching Irish law, we hope we have made clear that none of the resources described above offer comprehensive collections. Caution is advised in the use of all these resources, paying particular attention to the date range of material included. You will usually find that is necessary to use a combination of the sources mentioned to provide definitive answers. We hope that this article has helped to direct you towards the appropriate resources and that those resources will continue to improve.
