Irish Examiner view: Common sense prevails in challenge to Covid laws

John Waters and Gemma O'Doherty in an earlier court appeal.

It is not surprising that John Waters and Gemma O’Doherty’s appeal against a refusal to permit them to challenge laws introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic was rejected.

The pair sought to have various measures declared unconstitutional and flawed, but the three-judge Court of Appeal dismissed all grounds of their appeal. 

Court of Appeal president Mr Justice George Birmingham said the applicants claimed “to know better than the Government and the Oireachtas” and they dismissed internal and international advice concerning the pandemic available to the Government. 

This position is hardly rational.

It is one of the privileges of living in a laws-based democracy that all citizens have access to the courts. That privilege, however, carries a burden of responsibility and judgement for those who would exercise that right.

Whether those constraints were effective in this case is also an open question, but it can't be argued that the case provided a rallying point for some of this society’s least attractive elements blind to any view other than their own.