News

The High Court has quashed a decision by the Minister for Justice and Equality to refuse a visa extension for a Canadian national whose husband was studying in Ireland. Delivering judgment in the case, Mr Justice Max Barrett held that the Minister had failed to provide adequate reasons for the decis

Legal actions taken against the Department of Education more than doubled in 2020, as the Leaving Cert was cancelled and replaced with calculated grades. Almost 310 legal cases have been filed in the courts against the Department of Education since 2016 – an average of almost five per month.

The Criminal Justice (Perjury and Related Offences) Act 2021 came into force this week, making it easier to prosecute such offences. The Act provides a statutory definition of perjury and should enable the offence and related offences to be more easily prosecuted before the courts.

An IRA member, who was questioned by members of the “Belfast Brigade” over a botched operation, has lost his appeal against conviction. Robert Day had argued that the identification of his voice from a bugging of what gardai believed was an IRA meeting had lacked any procedural safeguard

The Courts Service has revealed that the pandemic led to a sharp decline in the overall number of cases heard by the courts last year. The total number of new criminal and civil cases heard by the courts last year dropped in comparison to the previous year, although divorce, domestic violence and se

Forty-two NGOs and advocates have joined FLAC's call made to the justice minister to ensure the civil legal aid scheme will protect vulnerable and marginalised members of the community. In a letter delivered to Government today, 43 signatories have called on the minister to ensure that the forthcomi

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Daft Media Limited have reached an agreement concerning property advertisements that are potentially in breach of equality legislation. This follows from a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) decision, dated 6 August 2019, which ruled in favou

The number of divorce applications last year rose by nearly a third (29 per cent) after legislation reform halved the time required for separation. The Court Service's annual report for 2020 revealed that there were 5,266 divorce applications made to the court last year, compared to 4.073 in 20

A homeless Dublin woman who robbed €500 from a man withdrawing cash from an ATM has been jailed for 18 months. Kelly McAuley, 23, was pregnant at the time of the offence.

The average age of barristers has risen substantially in the past three decades, according to a study by the Bar Standards Board. The average age of a barrister in 1990-91 was 38.5 but stood at 46.5 in 2019-20.

A cardinal's trial began this week at the Vatican – the first in modern history. Giovanni Angelo Becciu, 73, was an influential adviser to the Pope and head of the  “saint-making” secretariat at the Vatican but is now at the centre of a €350m million fraud case.

The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal brought by a defendant in summary judgment proceedings, stating that she had an arguable defence to the €3.39 million claim. The monies were sought by the plaintiff on the basis of a guarantee provided by the defendant, but the court held that the plain

Ireland had a busy legal year with 580,000 new cases coming to court despite the pandemic, the Courts Service annual report shows. Chief Justice Frank Clarke presented the 2020 Annual Report to Minister of State Hildegarde Naughton at a physically distanced event in Dublin today.

A Costa Coffee landlord is fighting claims that the lease for the Dundrum Town Centre café was frustrated by the pandemic and is pursuing a claim for €367,000 in unpaid rent, The Irish Times reports. MBCC Foods (Ireland), trading as Costa Coffee, claims that the lease of the caf&eac

New research has found that witnesses are almost seven times more likely to include misinformation if a crime has been discussed with co-witnesses and that intoxicated witnesses give accurate accounts but remember fewer details. Researchers from Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland and London