Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very significant and substantive amendment. It inserts in the Bill a new power for a coroner to seek directions from the High Court on any doubtful or difficult point of law arising in the exercise of his or her functions.

While coroners are normally determining questions of fact, difficult questions of law do inevitably arise occasionally on a range of issues relating to the exercise of their functions. Such issues might, for example, include the procedural rights of interested parties at inquest, or the interpretation of the European Convention of Human Rights on a new or difficult issue.

Currently, coroners have no legal avenue to seek direction from the courts on such points of law, and the main avenue is judicial review proceedings, which have to be taken by an interested party, rather than by the coroner.

Coroners strongly support a case stated facility for these reasons. This provision is long sought by the coroners and their representative association and a similar provision was included in the Coroners Bill 2007. The text used here is similar to the consultative case stated procedure used in the Tribunals of Inquiry Act as inserted by the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) (Amendment) Act 2004) and in the Coroners Bill 2007.

This is a special provision, which is to be used at the discretion of the coroner. Interested parties at inquest will continue to be entitled to seek judicial review, if they believe that a coroner has made a wrong decision as a matter of law. The case stated provision has a different purpose: it is there to enable coroners to seek guidance from the High Court on a difficult or unexplored point of law relating to the exercise of their functions. I do not expect that this will need to be used frequently but I do expect that it will be used judiciously by coroners and, used in that way, will greatly assist in clarifying and developing our coronial law in a very valuable manner.

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