For all those out there who have been selling horses outside the Pale in secrecy for fear of facing the death penalty, your worries are over.
This week we've seen a lot of talk about laws and legal loopholes, what with us accidentally making ecstasy legal there for a while, but it seems that there are a number of other obsolete laws that are finally headed to the chopping block.
In total, 5,782 obsolete pre-independence government regulations and orders are going to be repealed, which include some fairly strange ones, such as the 1542 proclomation that the holder of the crown in England is also "King of Ireland", which we were fairly sure we'd already dealt with but it turns out we were wrong. Similarly, in 1346 English money was declared the currency of Ireland, a law that will also be removed in due course. And we've been using the Euro this whole time, you think someone would have said something...
King of Ulster Shane O'Neill will also no longer be known as a traitor (he was declared one back in 1561), while the law prohibiting the sale of horses outside of the Pale "upon pain of death" is also headed for the bin.
Brendan Howlin, Minister for Reform, has said that the Statute Law Revision Bill of 2015 is the biggest of its kind in any country, and that the process is part of simplifying and modernising the process of reform in Ireland.
Via RTE News. Main pic via David Feltkamp/Flickr
