Private Prosecutions Ireland

The Constitution is not an abstract ideal. It is a living instrument, enforceable by everyone in every court in this land. When individuals within statutory institutions exceed their authority as civil and public servants by acting corruptly, the courts stand as the people's platform to publicly assert, protect, and vindicate our constitutional and statutory rights.

Every Minister of the Irish Government and every civil servant or officer acting under a Minister or a Ministerial department holds office and exercises functions solely by virtue of authority derived from the Constitution of Ireland and from statute. That authority does not belong to the Minister or to the department as of right. It is delegated authority, held on trust for the people of Ireland, and it is exercisable only within the boundaries the Constitution sets.

The Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924 established each Government department as a corporation sole vested in the Minister for the time being holding the relevant office. Section 2(1) of that Act provides that each Minister shall be a corporation sole with perpetual succession and an official seal, and shall be capable of suing and being sued under the name of the Minister for that department. The corporation sole is a legal construct. It is not a constitutional person. It does not hold rights superior to or independent of the Constitution, and it cannot shelter behind its corporate form to avoid constitutional accountability to the citizens of Ireland.

Every civil servant or officer working within a Ministerial department acts as an agent of that corporation sole and, through it, as an agent of the State. The capacity of that agent extends no further than the capacity of the corporation sole itself, and the capacity of the corporation sole extends no further than what the Constitution and the enabling statute lawfully permit.

Where a citizen of Ireland exercises a constitutional right in dealings with a Minister, a Ministerial department, or any officer acting under either, the constitutional obligation on that Minister, department, and officer is immediate and non-negotiable. It is not displaced by internal departmental procedure, ministerial policy, official guidance, or administrative practice. None of those instruments can override the Constitution. Where any such instrument conflicts with a constitutional right of the citizen, the instrument yields, not the right.

Article 6 of the Constitution declares that all powers of government derive from the people. A Minister exercises executive power as a member of a Government that is accountable to Dail Eireann under Article 28 and, through Dail Eireann, to the people. An officer of a Ministerial department exercises delegated power that traces back through the Minister and the Government to that same source. At no point in that chain does the authority become the personal property of the officeholder or the institutional property of the department. It remains, at every point, authority held in trust for and subject to the people of Ireland and the Constitution they enacted.

A State employee acting under a Minister who obstructs, ignores, or undermines the constitutional rights of a citizen does not act with the authority of the State. They act outside it. The corporate form of the department affords no protection against constitutional accountability, and the chain of delegation from the people through the Constitution to the Minister and downward to the individual officer means that accountability runs in both directions along the same chain.

Citizens of Ireland are not supplicants before Ministerial departments. They are the source of the authority those departments exercise. That relationship is not reversed by administrative hierarchy, departmental size, or the formal language of officialdom.

The People's Right to Prosecute

Every person in Ireland holds an ancient and unbroken right, confirmed by the Supreme Court and rooted in common law, to give information and prosecute offences before our courts of justice. This right belongs to every man and woman as one of the public, not for private gain, but to procure the punishment of wrongs done against us all. It predates the State itself. It survived the foundation of this Republic. It is preserved in the Petty Sessions Act 1851, protected by Article 30.3 of our Constitution, and confirmed by the Supreme Court in DPP v Roddy 1977. No act of the Oireachtas can extinguish what the Constitution preserves. The courts belong to the people. Justice is the birthright of everyone, without exception, without permission, and without fear.