The High Court will rule today on a challenge by a Fianna Fáil general election candidate to the constitutionality of provisions of the Electoral Act 1997.
The three-day hearing of the case taken by Mr Desmond Kelly, of Lucan, Co Dublin, who is contesting the Dublin Mid-West constituency, ended yesterday.
Mr Justice McKechnie will give judgment at 4 p.m. today.
A £20,000 spending limit is imposed on each candidate in the election. Mr Kelly contends that provisions of the 1997 Act exempt from calculation any of the services supplied for free to outgoing TDs, Senators and MEPs, including office space, secretarial services and free stationery and printing services.
He claims this unfairly discriminates in favour of outgoing members seeking re-election and against new challengers such as himself.
During the hearing Mr Eoghan Fitzsimons SC, for the Attorney General and State, said that while outgoing TDs were not entitled to use the services of Leinster House for electoral purposes they could use the services in an orderly manner in the winding down of their representative function before the election.
Yesterday Mr John Rogers SC, for Mr Kelly, said the Attorney General was effectively seeking to use the presumption of constitutionality attaching to the 1997 Act to defy the intention of parliament. It was not possible to say it was not the intention of parliament to exempt the expenses referred to.
The Attorney General was effectively saying the words of the Act were not to have their natural and ordinary meaning, he said. The natural meaning of the words could only be that they effected an exemption.