The High Court has ruled there was a fundamental denial of justice in the cases of a number of people who were refused bail while not legally represented in the District Court because of the current solicitors’ dispute.<\/p>\n
Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty delivered judgment today in the case of 11 of 21 cases before the court where people had challenged their detention because they did not have solicitors present due to the current dispute over legal aid.<\/p>\n
The judge said each one of the applicants was successful in arguing they were entitled to immediate release.<\/p>\n
She said it was “absolutely not the fault” of the sitting judges in the District Court. She also said the case was not about the withdrawal of services by solicitors or the regulations governing the new system of legal aid payments but about each individual case and what unfolded in court.<\/p>\n
She said the emphasis was on the right to liberty and the right to a specific remedy in circumstances where there had been a fundamental denial of justice in the bail hearings.<\/p>\n
Many of the applicants who were not granted bail at the District Court were subsequently granted bail by the High Court.<\/p>\n
However, they proceeded to challenge the lawfulness of their initial detention under what is known as an Article 40 application concerning a constitutional right to liberty.<\/p>\n
Today’s decision means that the State could be exposed to further legal action by those who the court has now ruled were unlawfully detained.<\/p>\n
In a hearing last week, lawyers for the applicants said their rights had not been vindicated in the District Court and there had been a fundamental denial of justice.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the Director of Public Prosecutions said it was not unlawful to proceed with a bail hearing in which an accused was not legally represented.<\/p>\n
The State’s legal team had argued that an Article 40 application was not appropriate for these cases which involved systemic issues which needed to be teased out.<\/p>\n
Further cases taken under Article 40 are still before the court and will be heard in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Ms Justice Gearty said she would publish her full judgment in the coming days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court has ruled there was a fundamental denial of justice in the cases of a number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-574148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}