The Supreme Court will give its detailed reasons on Monday for granting an appeal by the State against a High Court decision to free Mr A, a 41-year-old man serving a sentence for the statutory rape of a 12-year-old girl.
The five-judge court ordered his immediate rearrest on June 2nd last and Mr A was returned to custody that evening.
When granting the State's appeal, the Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, said the court would give its reasons in a judgment to be delivered at a later stage.
In a brief outline last month of the basis for the Supreme Court's decision, the court ruled Mr A's claim that he was entitled to release on the basis of the Supreme Court decision striking down the law on statutory rape was, in the circumstances of A's case, a "novel assertion" and not well founded.
The decision to strike down the law was made in another case, the CC case, on grounds it did not allow a defence of mistake as to age.
In Mr A's case, it was never asserted that Mr A was denied any constitutional right to advance a defence relating to mistake about age since he had never asserted that he had reasonable grounds for believing that the girl in his case was over 15, the Chief Justice said.
His counsel had never asserted that he had suffered any denial of justice or of procedural fairness.
The Chief Justice also said that Mr A had fully acquiesced in the jurisdiction of the court by entering a plea of guilty and at no stage did he put forward the defence that the girl was of the full age.
The State's appeal arose days after the High Court ordered Mr A's release after finding that his continued detention at Arbour Hill prison, where he had served 18 months of a three-year sentence, was unlawful in light of the Supreme Court decision in the CC case on May 23rd.
Mr A was jailed for three years at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on November 24th 2004. He pleaded guilty to the unlawful carnal knowledge of a 12-year-old girl on May 18th, 2003.
The trial court heard he had bought the girl four alcopops and two vodkas that evening. She went to bed around midnight and woke up in the early hours of the morning to get sick. It was then Mr A had full sexual intercourse with her.
The application for Mr A's release came after the Supreme Court ruling in the case of CC that unanimously declared as unconstitutional the law - Section 1.1 of the 1935 Criminal law Amendment Act - under which any man is automatically guilty of a crime if he has sex with a girl under 15 years of age.
The court made its decision on several grounds, including the failure in Section 1.1 to allow a defence that a genuine mistake had been made about a girl's age.
In the CC case, the man was 18 at the time he alleged he had consensual sex with a girl whom, he claimed, had told him she was older than she was.
The release of Mr A led to a number of other applications, brought under Article 40 of the Constitution, for release by persons serving sentences under the Section 1.1 law. Those applications have been adjourned pending the full judgment of the Supreme Court.