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Disagreement about matters of public policy concerned with moral issues is inevitable in pluralist democracies. One approach to the resolution of moral conflicts in society is the concept of deliberative democracies which emphasises the process or procedure which ultimately allows a political decision to be reached. The Republic of Ireland effectively has no legislative framework regulating human embryonic stem cell research (hESC research). This article proposes that Irish policymakers establish a procedural framework, similar to that used in other European democracies, to allow the development of appropriate regulations pertaining to hESC research in Ireland. In particular the article will consider how a three-tier model of procedural regulation has been used to achieve certainty in the area of hESC research in the United Kingdom and Germany and how this model might be applied to Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of Irish towns in the early modern period (from bastions of English loyalism, to centers of Catholic resistance, to stridently Protestant colonial outposts) has received relatively little attention from historians. Instead, scholars have focused on the major land transfers of the seventeenth century, but the change in urban settlement patterns proved even more dramatic and was closely related to the positioning of civic communities in relation to the military struggles of the 1640s and 1650s. The central argument is that the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland marked a crucial and irrevocable transformation in both the possibilities of civic militarism and the nature of urban society and politics more generally. It demonstrates that during the 1640s, the citizens of Ireland's major provincial cities participated in the troubles through strategic neutralism and the retention (or careful negotiation) of military force, acting with the fortunes of the citizenry in mind. This approach continued a tradition of relative civic autonomy, which was probably more embedded and accentuated in Ireland than either Scotland or England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a broad approach to the British and Irish commemoration of the Charge of the Light Brigade (CLB), by assessing the contemporary documentary and memorial evidence and providing useful case-studies for further research. It builds upon the 1858 study by Captains Colbourne and Brine on Balaklava memorials and cemeteries by including an appreciation of those memorials and graves in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. In contrast to Colbourne and Brine's purpose, which was to provide a catalogue of graves and memorials, this paper seeks to interpret their impact, imagery or importance as required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directive 95/46/EC on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data has been transposed into national law and is now the Data Protection (Amendment) Act, 2003. The Directive and the transposing Act provide for new obligations to those processing data. The new obligation of primary concern is the necessity to obtain consent prior to the processing of data (Article 7, Directive 95/46/EC). This has caused much concern especially in relation to 'secondary data' or 'archived data'. There exist, what seem to be in the minds of the medical research community, two competing interests: (i) that of the need to obtain consent prior to processing data and (ii) the need to protect and foster medical research. At the same time as the introduction of the Act, other prior legislation, i.e. the Freedom of Information Act, 1997-2003, has encouraged candour within the doctor-patient relationship and the High Court in Ireland, in the case of Geoghegan v. Harris, has promulgated the 'reasonable-patient test' as being the correct law in relation to the disclosure of risks to patients. The court stated that doctors have a duty to disclose all material risks to patients. The case demonstrates an example of a move toward a more open medical relationship. An example of this rationale was also recently seen in the United Kingdom in the House of Lords decision in Chester v. Afshar. Within the medical research community in Ireland, the need to respect the autonomy of patients and research participants by providing information to such parties has also been observed (Sheikh A. A., 2000 and Irish Council for Bioethics, 2005). Disquiet has been expressed in Ireland and other jurisdictions by the medical research communities in relation to the exact working and meaning of the Directive and therefore the transposing Acts (Strobl et al). This may be due to the fact that, as observed by Beyleveld "The Directive makes no specific mention of medical research and, consequently, it contains no provisions for medical research as an explicitly delineated category." (Beyleveld D., 2004) This paper examines the Irish Act and discusses whether the concerns expressed are well-founded and if the Act is open to interpretation such that it would not hamper medical research and public health work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents developments in the legal dispute between Ireland and Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning access to information under Article 9 of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR), as of December 2003. Background on the dispute; Nature of the OSPAR Convention; Details of the Access to information under the OSPAR Convention.

Discusses the decision of the United Nations International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on provisional measures in the MOX Plant case, the dispute between Ireland and Great Britain concerning the MOX plant, international movements of radioactive materials and the protection of the marine environment of the Irish Sea. Background to the dispute; Provisional measures Ireland requested.