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38 Jan/Feb 2017 Law Society Gazette | gazette.ie
EXTRADITION
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effective throughout all of those jurisdictions.
If an Irish court issued a warrant, that warrant
was transmitted to, say, Wales, where the
person was arrested and then sent back to
Ireland. This simple procedure was facilitated
by virtue of section 29 of the Petty Sessions
(Ireland) Act 1851.
Unsurprisingly, there were successful
challenges to this extradition system in both
jurisdictions. In 1964, the House of Lords
ruled in Metropolitan Police Commissioner v
Hammond that, as Ireland was an independent
state with its own police force, this system
could no longer operate. In 1965, the
Supreme Court in State (Quinn) v Ryan
ruled that this extradition system was
unconstitutional because it failed to provide
any grounds for a person to challenge their
extradition in a court.
This system of rendition came to an
end with the introduction of part III of
the Extradition Act 1965 in Ireland and
correspondingly by the Backing of Warrants
(Republic of Ireland) Act 1965 in Britain. On
1 January 2004, part III of the Extradition Act
1965 was repealed in Ireland and was replaced
by the EAW system.
The ‘old’ legislation has been repealed
and cannot, as a result, be resurrected to be
relied upon in the future.
The impractical option
A third option – using the European
Convention on Extradition 1957 as the basis
for future extraditions – is impractical.
The convention is a multilateral
extradition treaty introduced in 1957. Prior
to the introduction of the European arrest
warrant, the convention provided a system
for the extradition of persons between the
UP TO 1965, ANY ARREST WARRANT
ISSUED BY A COURT IN BRITAIN, THE
CHANNEL ISLANDS, THE ISLE OF
MAN, OR IRELAND WAS IMMEDIATELY
EFFECTIVE THROUGHOUT ALL OF
THOSE JURISDICTIONS
member states of the Council of Europe
(including EU countries), together with
certain specified ‘third’ states.
The convention was ‘replaced’ in
Ireland after 1 January 2004 (per article
31 of the framework decision) and in each
of the member states with the European
arrest warrant system, which streamlined
extradition procedures between the member
states. To this day, the convention remains
in existence between EU member states
and the other specified third states – for
example, South Africa. It also, of course,
governs extradition arrangements between
Ireland and non-EU European states.
The current EAW system acts
“without prejudice” to “existing extradition
agreements between member states and
third states”, which is the category that
Britain will fall into post-Brexit. Britain
will therefore be in a similar position to,
for example, the ‘third’ states of Jersey
or South Africa, from which Ireland has
successfully extradited persons using the
1957 convention.
How might this option work in
practice?
This option is not automatically
available. Ireland specifically excluded the
application of part II of the Extradition
Act 1965 to Britain. SI 474/2000 sets out
the various countries with which Ireland
has extradition arrangements and states