Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The short answer to that question is "No" for the reasons I outlined earlier. This framework decision is subject to certain constitutional principles. The framework decision must be interpreted in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights which is imported into European law by Article 6 of the European Union treaty. If murder were a criminal offence in Ireland and we brought in a statute criminalising murder, we could not make it retrospectively criminal because that would breach our Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. It would be grounds for a member state to resist extraditing a person if another state, where until the day before yesterday it was legal to carry out a certain act which was now a criminal offence, were to seek the Irish State, for example, to extradite that person so that it could try him retrospectively on that criminal offence in breach of the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. It would be mandatory on an Irish court, if that situation were drawn to its attention, to say that, in effect, it was a breach of the European convention and the person should not be extradited in such circumstances for the reasons set out in the main text of the statute which oblige an Irish court to uphold the person's rights in any decision it makes.

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