THE Supreme Court yesterday reserved judgment on whether it should consider every part of the Equal Status Bill or confine itself to two sections similar to those already found to be unconstitutional in the Employment Equality Bill.
The court had asked for sub missions on the preliminary issue of whether the five judges should go beyond consideration of the two sections, similar to the two rejected provisions in the previous Bill.
The Equal Status Bill was referred to the court by the President, Mrs Robinson, on May 7th, under Article 26 of the Constitution, to test its constitutionality.
The Bill provides for protection against discrimination for among others travellers, certain religious groups, homosexuals and people with some disabilities.
The previous Employment Equality Bill was referred to the Supreme Court last April. The court ruled that three parts were repugnant to the Constitution.
The two parts in the new Equal Status Bill that are similar are those relating to the provision for vicarious liability in relation to criminal offences and to the admission of evidence in a criminal prosecution of facts in a document certified by the Equality Director.
On Tuesday, when the hearing opened, the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hamilton said the problem with the case was that the two Bills were inexorably linked. The last Bill was not signed into law. This new Bill proceeded on the basis that the Employment Equality Bill was law.
Ms Mary Finlay SC, for the Attorney General and the State, said the AG accepted the inevitability that the court would find two sections of the Equal Status Bill unconstitutional. However she submitted that in spite of this the court should go on to hear and decide on each provision of the newly referred Bill.
If the court considered only the two sections, in the event of amending legislation being introduced, the Oireachtas would not know whether other sections were constitutional or not.
The Chief Justice said that according Ms Finlay's submission the court was obliged to consider every provision even though they knew that apart from the constitutionality of sections 70(1) and (40)3, huge sections of the Bill were inoperable because they related back to a Bill which had not been signed.