The European Convention on Human Rights has become part of Irish law and may now be cited during Irish court cases. Legal experts expect its main impact to be in the areas of criminal law, judicial review, defamation and family law.
The convention is likely to be pleaded in challenges to a number of rulings in the criminal law area, where there have been a considerable number of judgments in the Strasbourg court on the right to a fair trial, according to solicitor Mr James McGuill. These included the protection against self-incrimination, which many lawyers argue is compromised by the 1998 Offences Against the State Act, which allowed inferences to be drawn from refusing to answer questions.
It is also likely that it will be pleaded in cases where material was shown to the court, but not to the defence, as happened in the McKevitt case involving informer evidence. Solicitor and members of the Human Rights Commission, Mr Michael Farrell, said that in judicial review cases the question of "proportionality" could be pleaded under the convention.
This would mean that public bodies would not only be bound to act in a reasonable way, but that their actions should be a "proportionate" response to the act or omission of the citizen.
According to Mr Geoffrey Shannon, an expert in family law, the convention is unlikely to have a major impact on substantive family law, but will have an impact on procedure and issues like delay. He instanced delays in the procurement of reports for family law cases as issues where the convention would be argued.
"There are a number of very, very significant judgments on justice delayed being justice denied, especially where the law relating to children is concerned," he told The Irish Times. He said the non-implementation of the section of the 1997 Children Act dealing with children's rights to be represented separately in cases concerning them could be challenged under the convention. Defamation law is likely to be affected by the enhanced protection given by the convention to a citizen against a gratuitous invasion of his or her privacy, while the protection given to freedom of expression is enhanced.
The incorporation of the convention was promised in the Belfast Agreement signed in 1998, but the Act did not pass its final stages until June this year.