9. So far as the Aarhus Convention and domestic law is concerned, the relevant statutory provisions are to be found in the Long Title and Part 2 of the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011 (“the 2011 Act”). The Long Title recites that one of the objects of the 2011 Act is “to give effect to certain articles” of the Aarhus Convention and for judicial notice to be taken of the Convention. Section 8 of the 2011 Act provides that judicial notice of the Convention shall be taken. Sections 3 to 7 then modify the traditional costs order regime by “displacing the ordinary rules regarding the award of costs in litigation”: McCoy v. Shillelagh Quarries Ltd. High Court, 16th July 2014 per Baker J. The modified rules may be taken to ordain a procedure whereby, normally, the default order in cases coming within this part of the 2011 Act is that each side must abide their own costs. 10. It is nonetheless striking that the Oireachtas did not make the Aarhus Convention part of our domestic law as such. As I pointed out in Kimpton Vale Developments Ltd. v. An Bord Pleanála [2013] IEHC 442 it would, of course, have been open to the Oireachtas to do just that. Thus, for example, s. 20B of the Jurisdiction of Courts and Enforcement of Judgments Act 1998 (as inserted by s. 1 of the Jurisdiction of Courts and Enforcement of Judgments (Amendment) Act 2012) provides that the Lugano Convention of 2007 “has force of law in the State.” In that latter example the Lugano Convention was thereby given an autonomous, directly applicable status in Irish law, so that, for example, the relevant provisions of the Convention could be invoked appropriately on a free standing basis in all categories of litigation without further ado.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 07:52:22 +0000
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