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and new regimes. This led to the anomaly that some criminal legislation which was
common to both jurisdictions of Ireland and England and Wales was repealed in the latter
jurisdiction but continues to have full force of lawin Ireland, for example, the Probation of
Offenders Act 1907.
Following independence, a series of legislative measures were passed by the Oireachtas in
relation to diverse areas of economic and social life such as the regulation of companyand
commercial affairs, road traffic legislation dealing with drunk driving and motor insurance,
the protection of spouses and children from domestic violence and provision for family
maintenance, as well as criminal justice legislation relating to the regulation of public order.
The genesis of many of these legislative measures can be traced to a significant degree to
the laws passed in the Parliament at Westminster since Irish legislative independence in
1922. An example of this legislative transference is the community service order
introduced under the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act 1983 which is closely
modelled on the Criminal Justice Act 1972 which introduced community service orders
originallyin England and Wales (O’Mahoney2002:6).
Despite claims to the contrary by Ministers and Parliamentarians as to the outside
influences which preceded the introduction of community service in Ireland, the adoption
of the community service scheme in England and Wales by the Irish legislature was but
one of a continuous sequence of legislative transferences from the former imperial
jurisdiction to an Irish setting. There were distinct advantages to this process for the
recipient jurisdiction. In particular, legislative measures initiated in the host jurisdiction
were usuallyexamined in great detail through consultation and debate. Thus the efficacyof
such measures was tested in advance of transference. Moreover, legislative measures which
touched upon sentencing in particular allowed for an easy transference to a jurisdiction
which was culturallyand sociallyquite similar. 24
It could be argued that the adoption of legislative measures from one state to another
reflects a standardisation of approach to tackling certain issues as if these issues were easily
amenable to uniformand mechanical resolution. Earlier transferences of penal technology
such as the prison to other jurisdictions did not necessarily depend upon a colonial
24Criminal Justice Act 2006 SS.113-117. This relates to the introduction of so calledASBOs bywayof an amendment to the Children Act 2001 andrelatedlegislation.24 The purpose
of this proposal is to deal bywayof civil orders with incidents of anti-social behaviour particularly in relation to juveniles. The pattern of legislative transference is well established
andcontinues as we have seen in the case of anti-social behaviour orders to the present day.
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