Article 40
1. All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal
before the law.
This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its
enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and
of social function.
2. 1° Titles of nobility shall not be conferred by the
State.
2° No title of nobility or of honour may be accepted by any citizen
except with the prior approval of the Government.
3. 1° The State guarantees in its laws to respect,
and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate the personal
rights of the citizen.
2° The State shall, in particular, by its laws protect as best it may
from unjust attack and, in the case of injustice done, vindicate the life,
person, good name, and property rights of every citizen.
3° The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with
due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to
respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that
right.
This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State
and another state.
This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available,
in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law,
information relating to services lawfully available in another state.
4. 1° No citizen shall be deprived of his personal
liberty save in accordance with law.
2° Upon complaint being made by or on behalf of any person to the High Court or
any judge thereof alleging that such person is being unlawfully detained, the
High Court and any and every judge thereof to whom such complaint is made shall
forthwith enquire into the said complaint and may order the person in whose
custody such person is detained to produce the body of such person before the
High Court on a named day and to certify in writing the grounds of his
detention, and the High Court shall, upon the body of such person being
produced before that Court and after giving the person in whose custody he is
detained an opportunity of justifying the detention, order the release of such
person from such detention unless satisfied that he is being detained in
accordance with the law.
3° Where the body of a person alleged to be unlawfully detained is
produced before the High Court in pursuance of an order in that behalf made
under this section and that Court is satisfied that such person is being
detained in accordance with a law but that such law is invalid having regard to
the provisions of this Constitution, the High Court shall refer the question of
the validity of such law to the Supreme Court by way of case stated and may, at
the time of such reference or at any time thereafter, allow the said person to
be at liberty on such bail and subject to such conditions as the High Court
shall fix until the Supreme Court has determined the question so referred to
it.
4° The High Court before which the body of a person alleged to be
unlawfully detained is to be produced in pursuance of an order in that behalf
made under this section shall, if the President of the High Court or, if he is
not available, the senior judge of that Court who is available so directs in
respect of any particular case, consist of three judges and shall, in every
other case, consist of one judge only.
5° Nothing in this section, however, shall be invoked to prohibit,
control, or interfere with any act of the Defence Forces during the existence
of a state of war or armed rebellion.
6° Provision may be made by law for the refusal of bail by a court to a person
charged with a serious offence where it is reasonably considered necessary to
prevent the commission of a serious offence by that person.
5. The dwelling of every citizen is inviolable and
shall not be forcibly entered save in accordance with law.
6. 1° The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of
the following rights, subject to public order and morality:
i. |
The right of the
citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.
The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave
import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of
public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving
their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy,
shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the
State.
The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent
matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.
ii. |
The right of the
citizens to assemble peaceably and without arms.
Provision may be made by law to prevent or control meetings which are
determined in accordance with law to be calculated to cause a breach of the
peace or to be a danger or nuisance to the general public and to prevent or
control meetings in the vicinity of either House of the Oireachtas.
iii. |
The right of the
citizens to form associations and unions.
Laws, however, may be enacted for the regulation and control in the public
interest of the exercise of the foregoing right.
2° Laws regulating the manner in which the right of forming
associations and unions and the right of free assembly may be exercised shall
contain no political, religious or class discrimination.
The Family
| Article 41
1. 1° The State recognises the Family as the natural
primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution
possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to
all positive law.
2° The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its
constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as
indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.
2. 1° In particular, the State recognises that by her
life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the
common good cannot be achieved.
2° The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall
not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of
their duties in the home.
3. 1° The State pledges itself to guard with special
care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to
protect it against attack.
2° A Court designated by law may grant a dissolution of marriage
where, but only where, it is satisfied that
i. |
at the date of the
institution of the proceedings, the spouses have lived apart from one another
for a period of, or periods amounting to, at least four years during the five
years,
ii. |
there is no
reasonable prospect of a reconciliation between the spouses,
iii. |
such provision as the
Court considers proper having regard to the circumstances exists or will be
made for the spouses, any children of either or both of them and any other
person prescribed by law, and
iv. |
any further conditions
prescribed by law are complied with.
3° No person whose marriage has been dissolved under the civil law of
any other State but is a subsisting valid marriage under the law for the time
being in force within the jurisdiction of the Government and Parliament
established by this Constitution shall be capable of contracting a valid
marriage within that jurisdiction during the lifetime of the other party to the
marriage so dissolved.
Education
| Article 42
1. The State acknowledges that the primary and natural
educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable
right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the
religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their
children.
2. Parents shall be free to provide this education in
their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised or established by
the State.
3. 1° The State shall not oblige parents in violation
of their conscience and lawful preference to send their children to schools
established by the State, or to any particular type of school designated by the
State.
2° The State shall, however, as guardian of the common good, require
in view of actual conditions that the children receive a certain minimum
education, moral, intellectual and social.
4. The State shall provide for free primary education
and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and
corporate educational initiative, and, when the public good requires it,
provide other educational facilities or institutions with due regard, however,
for the rights of parents, especially in the matter of religious and moral
formation.
5. In exceptional cases, where the parents for
physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State
as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply
the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and
imprescriptible rights of the child.
| Private Property
| Article 43
1. 1° The State acknowledges that man, in virtue of
his rational being, has the natural right, antecedent to positive law, to the
private ownership of external goods.
2° The State accordingly guarantees to pass no law attempting to
abolish the right of private ownership or the general right to transfer,
bequeath, and inherit property.
2. 1° The State recognises, however, that the exercise
of the rights mentioned in the foregoing provisions of this Article ought, in
civil society, to be regulated by the principles of social justice.
2° The State, accordingly, may as occasion requires delimit by law the
exercise of the said rights with a view to reconciling their exercise with the
exigencies of the common good.
Religion
| Article 44
1. The State acknowledges that the homage of public
worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall
respect and honour religion.
2. 1° Freedom of conscience and the free profession
and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed
to every citizen.
2° The State guarantees not to endow any religion.
3° The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any
discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.
4° Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate
between schools under the management of different religious denominations, nor
be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school
receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.
5° Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs,
own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain
institutions for religious or charitable purposes.
6° The property of any religious denomination or any educational
institution shall not be diverted save for necessary works of public utility
and on payment of compensation.
| Constitution of Ireland
| Preamble
| Nation
| State
| President
| National Parliament
| Constitution and Powers
| Dail Eireann
| Seanad Eireann
| Legislation
| Government
| Local Government
| International Relations
| Attorney General
| Council of State
| Comptroller and Auditor General
| Courts
| Trial Of Offences
| Fundamental Rights
| Personal Rights
| Family
| Education
| Private Property
| Religion
| Directive Principles of Social Policy
| Amendment of the Constitution
| Referendum
| Repeal of Constitution of Saorstat
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