A High Court decision yesterday appears to extend the right to vote in all State elections to prisoners who are citizens of the State.
In a judgment with implications for all jailed people, Mr Justice Quirke ruled that a convicted arsonist, Stiofan Breathnach, also known as Stephen "Rossi" Walsh, has a right to vote in elections.
The failure of the State to provide a means whereby he could vote breached the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law, the judge found.
Breathnach, formerly of Castle Park, Sandymount, Dublin, was sentenced to a 15-year term in Wheatfield prison by the Special Criminal Court in 1993.
After giving judgment yesterday, when Mr Justice Quirke said that he would hear counsel about the type of order to be made by the court, Mr Eddie Walsh SC, for Breathnach, asked for a two-week adjournment.
He said: "One never knows if my client might want to exercise his right sooner than any or us imagine, the way things are presently."
In his ruling, Mr Justice Quirke said the loss of Breathnach's right to vote in national and other elections was not, at the time of his conviction, a sanction which was prescribed or permitted by law in respect of the offences of which he was convicted.
Accordingly, Breathnach retained his constitutionally protected right to vote at "an election for members of Dail Eireann" and his legally protected right to vote in Presidential, European and local government elections.
Breathnach was entitled to exercise that right provided that this exercise did not impose unreasonable demands on the authorities, the judge added.
It followed that the failure of the State to provide for Breathnach, as a citizen of the State among the prison population, the necessary machinery to enable him to exercise his franchise was a failure to vindicate the right conferred on him by Article 40(1) of the Constitution to be held equal before the law.
Breathnach had claimed that the State's failure to provide the necessary machinery for him to exercise his franchise to vote was a form of discrimination.
Mr Justice Quirke said that during the hearing it had been acknowledged by the State that it did not intend, within the foreseeable future, to permit Breathnach or any other citizen among the prison population to vote in either local or national elections or referendums.
The State had also claimed it had no plans to make arrangements which would enable Breathnach and other prisoners to exercise their right to vote in such elections.
The judge said that prisoners enjoyed a right which had been conferred on them by the Constitution to vote at elections for members of Dail Eireann, and no legislation was currently in force which removed that right or limited it in any way.