The Supreme Court allowed an appeal in a constitutional inquiry concerning extradition warrants, holding that the warrants had to be produced personally to the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána to meet a transition rule in the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
Three arrest warrants were issued by the Crown Court at Kingston-upon-Thames on 18 December 2003 and sent to the Garda extradition section in Dublin on 22 December. The section forwarded them for consideration under the Extradition Act 1965. On 24 December, the section was told there was no objection to executing them.
The judgment records that the warrants were executed on 2 December 2004, while also stating that there was no evidence that the Assistant Commissioner or another person defined as “the Commissioner” had seen or physically received them before 2 January 2004. The dates as printed are internally inconsistent: the stated execution date is later than both the Act’s commencement and the described events in early January.
The European Arrest Warrant Act came into force on 1 January 2004 and repealed Part III of the 1965 Act, including the provision for endorsing warrants. A saving provision kept the old law applicable to a warrant if, before commencement, it had been produced to the Commissioner for the purposes of that provision or endorsed for execution. The court said the warrants had not been endorsed before commencement, leaving whether their receipt by the extradition section counted as production.
The applicant argued that production had to be personal because the Commissioner’s role included making a determination about whether the person named in the warrant might be found in the State. The respondents argued that receipt by the extradition section amounted to production, as a separate administrative step before endorsement.
Mr Justice McCracken rejected the respondents’ interpretation. He said routine forwarding of copies to the Attorney General and Minister was an administrative function and did not require the Commissioner to see the warrants. But the statutory determination required physical production to a person within the Act’s definition of Commissioner, which included a Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner. Receipt by the extradition section alone was insufficient.
The judge also considered the EU Framework Decision’s transitional wording, which preserved the existing extradition instruments for requests received before 1 January 2004. He concluded that “existing instruments” referred to instruments continuing to exist after receipt, rather than only those in force on the receipt date. He would therefore allow the appeal. The judgment does not set out any further order or detail the consequences for the applicant’s custody.