The Supreme Court has prohibited three assault prosecutions arising from incidents in Mayo and Cork after ruling that the common law offences involved had ceased to exist before the cases were completed.
Padraic Grealis faced three summonses arising from alleged incidents in May 1997. Two alleged common law assaults at Hotel Westport on Margaret Sweeney and Francis Sweeney. A third alleged that he assaulted Christopher McGinty at Mulranny, causing actual bodily harm contrary to section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
Emmett Corbett faced a summons alleging an assault on Brian Cashman at William Street, Cork, in February 1997.
The legal difficulty arose after the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 abolished common law assault and related offences with effect from 19 August 1997. The Act contained no transitional provision preserving prosecutions for those offences committed before abolition.
Chief Justice Keane held that, under settled common law principles, an abolished offence cannot continue to support a prosecution unless legislation expressly preserves earlier offences or proceedings. General principles of statutory interpretation could not override the clear language abolishing the offences.
The Oireachtas later enacted the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997 to preserve prosecutions for abolished common law offences. However, the Supreme Court concluded that a constitutional safeguard within that Act prevented it from retrospectively applying to prosecutions already instituted before that legislation came into force.
That meant the two common law assault summonses against Grealis and the summons against Corbett had to be prohibited.
Grealis did not succeed on his third summons. The Supreme Court held that assault occasioning actual bodily harm under section 47 of the 1861 Act was a statutory offence rather than merely common law assault with a higher penalty. It was therefore preserved by the Interpretation Act 1937 and could continue.
The ruling resolved the prosecutions on those legal grounds without determining whether either man had committed the alleged assaults.