The High Court has overturned orders which banned the media from a criminal hearing and prohibited publication of the name of a youth who was aged 15 when he pleaded guilty to stabbing a 22-year-old man.
The prohibition orders were successfully challenged by Independent Newspapers (Ireland) in the High Court yesterday.
In a reserved judgment, Ms Justice Dunne quashed the orders made by the Circuit Court last March 26th and July 19th. Those orders had directed that the court proceedings relating to the youth should be held in private.
Ms Justice Dunne said the statutory provision which allowed certain matters to be heard in private and created an exception to the constitutional provision that justice must be administered in public must be strictly construed.
Accordingly, she was of the view that, if the legislature intended such exception to apply to proceedings in the Circuit Criminal Court or any other court, the express words would have to be used.
She disagreed with arguments that it was absurd to interpret Section 93 of the Children's Act, 2001, which prohibits publication of the names of children involved in proceedings before that court, as having its application restricted to that court.
There may be good reason for distinction to be made between proceedings in the Children's Court and proceedings in the Circuit Criminal Court, she said. The one obvious distinction between proceedings was the gravity of the offence.
Ms Justice Dunne - in a 20-page judgment - said it seemed she must strictly construe the provisions of Section 93 and in doing so could only come to the conclusion that the reporting restrictions contained in it were confined only to proceedings before the Children's Court.
It appeared in the course of Circuit Court proceedings that the order made then was that the proceedings should be heard in camera. There was a difference between proceedings in which there were reporting restrictions and proceedings held in camera.
Even if Section 93 or Section 252 of the 2001 Act had applied, those provisions did not authorise an in-camera hearing and, accordingly, members of the press should not have been excluded from the hearing of July 19th, 2004.