AG stresses need to tidy laws

The speed at which laws are enacted and amendments are made is making the legal system more inaccessible to the public, the Attorney General has said.

Paul Gallagher SC said the process of tidying up existing laws "cannot be overstated" given the pace of change.

Mr Gallagher was speaking at the launch of a consultation paper on statute law restatement. It involves consolidating existing laws and amendments into one document.

The task is being carried out by the Law Reform Commission (LRC)which found that the Freedom of Information Act (1997) has already been amended more than 100 times. However, only half the amendments were included in the Act itself. The rest were contained in 76 other Acts, orders or regulations.

The commission also said that laws were contained in Acts which would appear, given their title, to be about something completely different. The law which allowed a customer to request about the source of meat served in a restaurant was contained in the Irish Medicines Board (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006.

Mr Gallagher said the intrinsic complexity of the law was enough to daunt those who were responsible for interpreting it.

"What adds to that intrinsic difficulty is accessibility, and the difficulty in being sure that we track down various amendments that come at increasing rates."

The consultation paper contains a full restatement of the Freedom of Information Act. It is one of 60 Acts which will be re-examined by the LRC, including the Data Protection Act (1988) and the Consumer Credit Act (1995)

The commission director of research, Raymond Byrne, said the laws were chosen because of their relevance to the public as it would be difficult to restate all 3,189 Acts on the statute books.

"The commission will have to see what ones would really be of benefit to society in terms of access to citizens, so that's why we chose the Freedom of Information Act first."