IRELAND
Irish Times
Supreme Court judge says Strasbourg has ‘very serious questions’ over new role
Ronan McGreevy
Fri, Sep 5, 2014
A senior judge has warned the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg may be exceeding its own powers by taking on cases that have not been fully heard in member states. Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman of the Supreme Court said it would appear from the recent Louise O’Keeffe judgment that the Strasbourg court’s interpretation of its own powers had been changed in a “radical and indeed a revolutionary way”.
At a legal conference in Dublin City University yesterday, Mr Justice Hardiman said that article 35.1 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which set up the court, was specific in what cases it could hear. “The court may only deal with the matter after all domestic remedies have been exhausted,” it states.
However, Mr Justice Hardiman said that principal was exceeded in the case of the landmark judgment of Louise O’Keeffe v Ireland, in which Ms O’Keeffe successfully sued the State for liability over the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her primary school principal in Kinsale during the 1970s.
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