The Supreme Court dismissed the Governor of Portlaoise Prison’s appeal and allowed the applicants’ cross-appeal in proceedings over the legality of their detention following transfer from England. The Court upheld the High Court’s orders directing the immediate release of Fintan Paul O’Farrell, Michael Christopher McDonald and Declan John Rafferty.
The three men had been transferred to Ireland in 2006 to serve the balance of prison sentences imposed in England. In 2014, they began habeas corpus proceedings challenging their continued detention. The High Court found their detention unlawful and ordered their release after the Minister’s application to change the terms of the warrants was refused in part.
The appeal followed the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in *Sweeney v. Governor of Loughlan House Open Centre*. That decision held that a person transferred under the Transfer of Sentenced Persons Act 1995 could not be detained in Ireland beyond the period of actual custody they would have served in England before automatic release. For O’Farrell, that period was eighteen years and eight months.
The High Court warrant for O’Farrell recorded a 28-year sentence and gave a commencement date later found to be incorrect. The Supreme Court held that the sentence duration on the warrant did not match the period during which he could lawfully be detained in Ireland under *Sweeney*. It said the discrepancy was fundamental and left the warrant unable to provide a legal basis for detention.
The Court also rejected the proposed use of section 9 of the 1995 Act to replace the 28-year term with eighteen years and eight months. It held that varying the warrant could not be used to make that fundamental substitution. The High Court had corrected the commencement date under section 9, but the Supreme Court distinguished that correction from changing the sentence duration.
The judgment discussed whether an English sentence combining imprisonment with a period of supervised release in the community was incompatible with Irish law, and whether it could have been adapted under the Act. Those observations were expressly obiter: no adaptation application had been made, and the Court said the issue would await a case in which it arose.
On the cross-appeal, the Court held that once the High Court had found the detention unlawful, it should have ordered immediate release at the end of the first hearing, on 26 August 2014. Article 40.4.2° generally requires immediate release when detention is not in accordance with law, subject to exceptional circumstances such as steps needed to protect a vulnerable person. The judgment did not determine any wider consequences of the warrants’ invalidity.