Coronavirus

A woman has been jailed for nine months after spitting in the face of a key worker at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Belfast woman Pauline Burns, 56, pleaded guilty in Belfast Crown Court to one count of common assault on 4 April 2020.

Workers in Northern Ireland who are laid off while furloughed will receive redundancy pay based on their normal wage under new laws being brought in next month. A spokesperson for the Department for the Economy (DfE) confirmed to Irish Legal News today that the changes being brought into effect in E

Successful efforts to keep COVID-19 out of Irish prisons came at a "significant cost to the mental health and wellbeing of the people subject to special measures", a new report has found. The Office of the Inspector of Prisons (OIP), in conjunction with legal academics at Maynooth University, has pu

Legal rights organisation FLAC has challenged the legal basis for sanctioning Covid Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) claimants who travel abroad for holidays. Eilis Barry, CEO of FLAC, wrote to Social Protection Minister Heather Humphries after a number of individuals and NGOs contacted the organ

The justice sector has received a €24 million funding boost as part of the government's July stimulus package, which will support modernisation efforts and improvements to access to justice in Ireland. Announcing the funding last night, Justice Minister Helen McEntee said it would provide for i

The Northern Ireland Executive should be "very slow to interfere" with the current 12-person jury in criminal trials in the face of the COVID-19 backlog, an experienced criminal lawyer has said. According to newspaper reports over the weekend, a reduction in the size of juries from 12 to seven or ni

Computing experts have raised serious privacy and data harvesting concerns relating to Google software running on the phones of all Android smartphone users who want to use Ireland's COVID-19 contact tracing app. Professor Douglas Leith, chair of computing systems at Trinity College Dublin, and his

The Courts Service has "developed five years in the past five months" in terms of thinking, planning and actions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chief Justice Frank Clarke has said. Speaking at the launch of the service's annual report for 2019, which he said "seems now like a different era", he welco

Lord Sumption has admitted that he stopped obeying the coronavirus regulations when they began "reaching levels of absurdity". Speaking to legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg QC (hon.), the former Supreme Court justice said he did not accept that there was a "moral obligation to comply with the law".

Barristers in Northern Ireland have reportedly been told that the size of juries in criminal cases could be reduced from 12 to nine or seven members to help clear the COVID-19 backlog. The Office of the Lord Chief Justice, the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service, The Bar of Northern Irelan

People attending the courts have been asked to wear face coverings by the most senior judges in Ireland. The direction was given by the president of the Court of Appeal today, and follows a similar direction to politicians using Leinster House and the Convention Centre yesterday in an attempt to sto

Legislation to protect renters will be considered by government ministers on Thursday following the final extension of the COVID-19 rent freeze and eviction moratorium. The Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Act 2020 prohibits rent increases and evictions during the "emergency peri

The number of property transactions in Northern Ireland has started to bounce back following the reopening of the housing market last month. There were 1,320 property transactions in Northern Ireland in June 2020, up from 540 in May and 410 in April, according to new HMRC figures.

Prison authorities have warned prisoners' families that their loved ones could overdose on drugs smuggled into prison after months of COVID-19 restrictions. In its new family information booklet, the Irish Prison Service (IPS) warns that drug overdose "is now the main threat facing your loved ones i

The backlog of criminal trials which has built up during the COVID-19 crisis totals roughly half of the number of cases typically heard in a year, according to reports. Chief Justice Frank Clarke announced last week that criminal jury trials are set to resume in the Central Criminal Court this month