Ireland

This case represented the first trial and conviction for female genital mutilation in Ireland. The accused were originally from a French-speaking African country, and were charged and convicted with female genital mutilation and neglect of their daughter in relation to the same incident. At the time of the offence, the girl was under two years old, and her injuries were discovered when her parents brought her to the Accident and Emergency Department of an Irish hospital due to uncontrollable bleeding.

The 2018 Act consolidates the law on domestic violence. It provides for safety orders (Section 6), protection orders (Section 10), barring orders (Sections 8-9), and care or supervision orders (Section 12), which a court may issue based on all factors or circumstances it deems relevant, including the Act’s 19 enumerated factors (Section 5). The Act penalizes a contravention of an order with a class B fine (up to €4,000), imprisonment of a term not exceeding 12 months, or both.

The Employment Equality Act pertains to discrimination in the employment context.

The Equal Status Act pertains to the delivery of goods and services. (Section 1). It prohibits discrimination (with specified exceptions) in the disposal of goods and provision of services (Section 5), the disposal of premises and provision of accommodation (Section 6), and education establishments (Section 7).

The Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA)’s report on Ireland concerns how Ireland prevents and prosecutes human trafficking. The report demonstrated that the total number of presumed trafficking victims in Ireland fell from 103 in 2017 to 44 in 2021. According to GRETA, sexual exploitation remains the primary form of exploitation in Ireland, but the number of people trafficked for labour exploitation in sectors including fishing, farming, construction, catering, and domestic work grew over the same period.

In 2007, the High Court held that the failure to allow the applicant, a transgender woman who had undergone gender-affirming surgery, to obtain a new birth certificate recording her gender as female violated her rights under Article 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which had been made part of Irish law, despite having found in previous proceedings involving the same applicant that her constitutional right to privacy was not disproportionately or excessively infringed.  The Court agreed with the applicant that existing Irish law barred the effective recognition

The Act requires the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to make regulations requiring employers to publish information relating to the pay of their employees to show whether there are differences on account gender and the size of such differences (if they exist).

The Act provides for recognition of changes of gender, issuance of gender recognition certificates, and conforming amendments to other legislation, including the Adoption Act 2010. Any person of at least 18 years of age who is not married or in a civil partnership, inter alia (Section 9), may apply to the Minister for Social Protection for a gender recognition certificate (Section 8).  Where a gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, that person’s gender shall from the date of that issue become for all purposes the ‘preferred’ gender and sex (Section 18).

The applicant was given refugee status and had successfully applied for permission for his second wife to join him in Ireland. The present case arose when he sought to have his first wife join him. In considering the legal consequences of a polygamous marriage entered into in another country, the Supreme Court ruled that, where a man had married two wives under the laws of Lebanon, the first marriage is valid under Irish law but the second is not.  The appellant (husband) had married two women in a manner permissible under the laws of Lebanon (their previous state of domicile).

The Act focuses on the non-consensual distribution of explicit images, inter alia. Section 2 makes it an offence to distribute, publish, or threaten to distribute or publish an intimate image with (i) intent to harm or (ii) being reckless as to whether harm is caused. Section 1 defines “distribute” and “publish” as being distributed or published to the public or a section of the public. Section 1 further defines an “intimate image” in broad terms, encompassing a photographic, film, video, or digital representation, and includes nude, non-nude, or sexual images.