Seventy five years on, and the Civil War is claiming its latest victim: a large part of the winter tourism market. Legislation drawn up in the shadow of the Civil War to prevent the IRA using the pretext of a pheasant-shoot to run a training camp, now looks as if it will make the use of firearms by tourists virtually impossible.
And at this point, we will declare that the High Court has correctly, nay brilliantly, interpreted the law in its ruling which effectively bans foreigners coming to Ireland for gameshooting. I say this for two reasons. The first is my terror of being hauled off by the collar and chucked into the jug for uttering words of contempt, the second, because it is so. Mr Justice Quirke's ruling that the procedures employed by the Ministers for Justice and Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht, the Islands, and Whatever You're Having Yourself were illegal is, in terms of the law, superbly correct, y'r honour.
An impossible task
It is the law, not the judge, which is an ass: and not merely the law, but the tradition of our laws, which asks of law-makers and law-drafters that they possess the forensic prescience which will enable them to make faultless legislation which can survive the scrutiny of the bright lads of the bench, and the smooth-tongued wizards before them. The truth is, nobody can do that.
The most obviously startling example of verbal failure by those who composed the words of law is that of the abortion referendum, which the Supreme Court was able to rule could in certain circumstances permit the very thing which we all know the electorate had intended to prohibit completely. Now, as it happens, I detested that particular referendum amendment, in particular the cynical political manipulation by Charles Haughey, which caused it to be passed.
But the will of the people had expressed itself, clearly and decisively, in a measure designed to make abortion totally impossible. The Supreme Court, using the fine and searching logic which exists perhaps only in the legal mind, was able to show that this act of will could mean the complete opposite of what was intended. (Can you imagine the uproar in liberal Ireland if the Supreme Court had ruled that some liberal legal measure could end up making a hardline, doctrinaire Catholic position the law of the land?)
There's probably no easy way to resolve the consequences of the most brilliant minds we have examining the handiwork of their intellectual lessers. As with the Persian carpet, they will always find the dropped stitch: and with the abortion referendum, the dropped stitch can be enough to do the equivalent of turning a Persian carpet into a blacksmith's anvil.
Preamble to all laws?
The answer to this conundrum might be a preamble to all laws, setting out the intentions of the law-makers, which would be superior to all subsequent clauses. If that had been the case for the 1925 Firearms Act, in particular, it's unlikely that Mr Justice Quirke would have ruled as he did. That act was designed to limit the IRA's ability to bump off gardai, soldiers and any stray Ministers for Justice, yes, and even judges, who came their way, should the mood so take them. The one category of human beings with guns that the Free State government was happy about would have been tourists; and that is the very species who may not now shoot in Ireland.
Brilliant. Utterly brilliant. No doubt the National Association of Regional Game Councils, which brought the High Court Action, is delighted with itself. Like the disgraceful rod-angling dispute of a decade ago, this little affair pits the occasional amateur against the full time professional, though fortunately without the savagery, abuse, boycotts and threats with which the rod angling amateurs conducted their campaign then.
The consequences of the NARGC council victory could be the loss of a large part of the winter tourism season, and nothing is gained. Endangered species are not being protected - not least because they are not threatened by foreigners, per se. Mr Justice Quirke actually rejected the NARGC conservation arguments concerning visitors. In fact, far from foreigners being a threat, they are often a benefit. For example, few Irish people have a taste for deer-stalking, and sika deer, in Kerry especially, are an antlered pest and a genetic threat to our native red deer; they must be culled.
So we should be grateful for the foreigners who are prepared to spend lots of money in the winter and keep open hotels which might otherwise be closed, and who will pay good money, usually Deutschmarks, in order to stalk and kill these cervine pests. Yet these benefactors are now, by law, prevented from performing these vital culls. It is the equivalent of rat-catchers paying you for the privilege of removing rats from your house: and then some bright spark comes along and gets a High Court ruling preventing you and them from doing just that.
Chance for glory
So, a good few hotels which might have remained open this winter will probably close; the numbers of sika deer will increase, as will the red deer-sika hybrids. It is a depressing story of how a small pressure group has used an antiquated law in its own interests and in direct contravention of the intentions of the lawmakers and of the interests of the countryside.
Let us hope it is a pyrrhic victory. The European Court will almost certainly find the High Court ruling is in contravention of European law, inasmuch as it discriminates against non-Irish nationals. The Sile de Valera, our sterling Minister for the Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht, the Islands, Tomas O Coblaigh and Whatever You're Having Yourself, can put on her hunting olive combats, her green wellies, her floppy-eared hat etc, and can fearlessly frame laws that are immune to deconstruction and inversion through textual analysis by The Wigged Ones.
Here is your chance Sile, for constitutional glory. Declare that the preambular statement of purpose in your next wild-life bill to be anterior and superior to all else that follows, and let a Dev bring down the curtain on the Civil war, once and for all.