Supreme Court ruling - Decisions put off for far too long

THE Supreme Court yesterday did what supreme courts do: it ruled in favour of one argument and rejected another. It made a decision on what a piece of legislation actually means.

Mrs Justice Susan Denham, one of the five presiding judges who were in unanimous agreement on yesterday’s issue, described the situation thus: “this was a court of law that had been requested to make a legal decision on the construction of an article in the Constitution.”

The issue at hand was an appeal by a woman seeking to have three frozen embryos released to her so she might try to have a baby even though her estranged husband had withdrawn his permission for their embryos to be so used. Rejecting the woman’s appeal the Supreme Court used the opportunity to “express concern at the total absence of any form of statutory regulation of in vitro fertilisation in Ireland”.