IRISH FREE STATE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 11

IRISH FREE STATE

APPEALS TO PRIVY COUNCIL JURISDICTION QUESTION DECISION OF JUDICIAL COMMITTEE By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright (Rec. April 11, 9.50 p.m.) London, April 11. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council having heard the appeal from the decision of the Supreme Court of the Irish Free State, the Lord Chancellor, in dealing with the constitutional question whether the committee had jurisdiction to hear an appeal, said: “Their Lordships are of opinion that this had been decided in the constitution of the Free State itself. They could not think the words his Majesty-in-Council used in the Irish Free State constitution and both Acts of Parliament thereto scheduled meant anything other than the Privy CounciL” The question now arises, will the Free State carry out the threat of the Irish Minister of Finance to make any Privy Council decision reversing the Irish judgment ineffective? PROVISIONS OF TREATY The treaty signed with the British Government in December, 1921, and embodied in the Irish Free State Act of 1922, contains the following provisions, among others: — “Ireland to have the same constitutional status ‘in the community of nations known as the British Empire as the self-governing Dominions, and to be called the Irish Free State. ’ “Its position in relation to the Imperial Parliament and Government to be that of the Dominion of Canada, and the representative of the Crown in Ireland to be appointed in like manner as the Governor-General of Canada.” MR. BLYTHE’S THREAT Mr. E. Blythe, Minister of Finance, in a speech in the Free State Senate last November, declared that the Free State Government was determined to get rid of Privy Council appeals, which were anomalous in the present state of development of the British Commonwealth. The right of appeal was dead, and it only remained for the British Government to give it decent burial. If further appeals were taken from the Free State to the Privy Council no Free State representative would attend, and if the Council should reverse a Free State Supreme Court decision the Free State Government would take whatever steps might be necessary to nullify the Privy Council’s decision.