The Court of Appeal dismissed Thomas O’Connor’s appeals over a European arrest warrant and a related constitutional challenge, leaving in place the High Court’s order for his surrender. It held that EU law did not require Ireland to provide free legal aid in European arrest warrant cases and that his challenge did not establish grounds to invalidate the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
The judgment, delivered on 23 October 2015, concerned a warrant issued on 13 June 2011. It sought O’Connor’s surrender to serve sentences imposed in 2007 for tax fraud and to face a charge of absconding and breaching bail conditions. The Court of Appeal described the matter as involving two proceedings: the warrant enforcement case and O’Connor’s separate plenary action challenging the legislation.
O’Connor argued that the Legal Aid (Custody Issues) Scheme, which can fund representation in warrant cases, was administrative and discretionary rather than a statutory entitlement. He said this conflicted with the EU Framework Decision on European arrest warrants. In his plenary action, he also argued that the absence of statutory legal aid for people facing surrender proceedings breached the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law.
The Court of Appeal considered itself bound by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Framework Decision in Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform v Olsson. That ruling held that the Framework Decision provides a right to legal representation in accordance with national law, but does not require the State to fund it. The Court of Appeal said the existing scheme was therefore not in conflict with EU law. It also refused O’Connor’s request to refer the issue to the Court of Justice of the European Union, saying it would not be proper to seek to overturn a binding Supreme Court decision that way in the circumstances.
On the constitutional claim, the court said the 2003 Act did not prevent access to legal assistance and that O’Connor’s argument sought to invalidate legislation because it did not include the statutory scheme he wanted. The court found no basis to invalidate the Act and concluded that the High Court had correctly rejected the challenge.
The Court of Appeal did not decide the separate question of whether O’Connor had standing to bring the plenary action. It said that issue did not need to be determined to dispose of the claim. The appeal outcome left the High Court’s surrender order in place; the judgment did not itself describe a new surrender order being made.