D.P.P. (Ivers) v Murphy [1998] I.E.S.C. 19

The learned Trial Judge applied the literal rule of interpretation. There is authority that this should be applied even if the result be absurd. Thus Lord Esher said in R. v Judge of the City of London Court [1892] 1 Q.B. 273 at 290: ‘If the words of an Act are clear, you must follow them, even though they lead to a manifest absurdity. The Court has nothing to do with the question whether the legislature has committed an absurdity.’ However, this approach is ameliorated by the golden rule which was described by Lord Blackburn in River Wear Commissioners v Adamson (1877) 2 App. Cas. 743 at 764 as: ‘I believe that it is not disputed that what Lord Wensleydale used to call the golden rule is right, viz, that we are to take the whole statute together, and construe it all together, giving their words their ordinary significance, unless when so applied they produce an inconsistency, or an absurdity or inconvenience so great as to convince the Court that the intention could not have been to use them in their ordinary significance, and to justify the Court in putting on them some other signification, which, though less proper, is one which the Court thinks the words will bear.’ Such an approach enables the court to consider the entirety of the Act or Section when the literal interpretation produces an absurdity. This choice was described by Henchy J in Nestor v Murphy [1979] I.R. 326 as ‘To construe the subsection in the way proposed on behalf of the defendants would lead to pointless absurdity’. The third Rule of construction, the Mischief Rule, may also be considered. This rule was described in Heydon’s Case (1584) 3 Co Rep. 7: ‘And it was resolved by them, that for the sure and true interpretation of all statutes in general (be they penal or beneficial, restrictive or enlarging of the Common Law), four things are to be discerned and considered: (1) What was the Common Law before the making of the Act? (2) What was the mischief and defect for which the Common Law did not provide? (3) What was the remedy the Parliament hath resolved and appointed to cure the disease of the commonwealth? (4) The true reason of the remedy; and then the office of all the Judges is always to make such construction as shall suppress the mischief, and advance the remedy and to suppress subtle inventions and evasions for continuance of the mischief, and pro privato commodo, and to add force and life to the cure and remedy, according to the true intent of the makers of the Act, pro bono publico’ This rule is now more commonly called the purposive approach. In Pepper v Hart [1993] 1 All E.R. 42 Lord Griffiths stated at p 50: ‘The days have long passed when the courts adopted a strict constuctionist view of interpretation which required them to adopt the literal meaning of the language. The courts now adopt a purposive approach which seeks to give effect to the true purpose of legislation ...’