IRISH FREE STATE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 155, 12 April 1930, Page 7

IRISH FREE STATE.

QUESTION OF CONSTITUTION. APPEALS TO PRIVY COUNCIL. (United Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, April 11. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council having heard an appeal from a decision of the Supreme Court of the Irish Free State, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Sankey) in dealing with the constitutional question whether the committee had jurisdiction to hear the appeal, said that their Lordships were of the opinion that this bad been decided by the constitution of the Free State itself. They would not think that the words of hri Majesty in Council, used in the Irish Free State constitution and both sets of Parliament thereto scheduled, meant anything other than the Privy Council. The question now arises: Will the Irish Free State carry out the threat of the Irish Minister for Finance to make ineffective any Privy Council decision reversing an Irish judgment?

The appeal to the King in Council from decisions of the Irish Supreme Court was expressly preserved by the Treaty of 1921, which formed the basis of the Free State’s constitution. Speaking recently in the Senate, Mr Blythe said that “the effective right of "appeal to the Privy Council is dead” and that if in any case “private litigants appealed to the Privy Council and obtain a judgment reversing or modifying the decree of the Free State Supreme Court, the Free State Government will then take whatever steps are necessary to make the Judicial Committee’s decision ineffective.”