“public road” - novel nit-picking

Victor

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1961/act/24/section/3/enacted/en/html#sec3

“public road” means a road the responsibility for the maintenance of which lies on a road authority;

Invariably, road authorities are also housing authorities.

Let us say a council owns a housing estate. Are the roads automatically 'public roads', seeing as they are maintained by the council? Even if the housing authority applies special rules to those roads, e.g. 'resident parking only, speed limit 5mph, no ball games' without using bye-laws?

Are the driveways within the curtilage of individual houses 'public roads', seeing as they are maintained by the council?

Let us say a council owns a gated apartment development. Are the roads automatically 'public roads', seeing as they are maintained by the council?

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http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1994/act/7/section/49/enacted/en/html

“‘public place’ means—

(a) any public road, and

(b) any street, road or other place to which the public have access with vehicles whether as of right or by permission and whether subject to or free of charge;”;

Is there a difference between permissive situations (e.g. shopping centre car park*), privately-owned car parks (e.g. factory**) and places where more formal permission is needed (e.g. army barracks***).

* "We are closing at 9pm, you need to have your vehicle off the premises by 9:15pm."
** "Oi, get out!" (even if there is no gate)
*** "Can I come in please? I have an appointment with the Colonel."

Some of the above seems to be dependent on common sense.

Pat Mustard

I think that you are likely to find a fairly good discussion on the definition of a public place in a text like Woods on Road Traffic Offences, if that is any good to you.

Certain places and roads will be deemed to be public places for the purposes of the Road Traffic Acts, even though they may not have been taken in charge by the local authority, so I think the more important question is the definition of a public place.

barnaman

“public road” means a road over which a public right of way exists and the responsibility for the maintenance of which lies on a road authority;

From Roads Act so for council housing etc they are not public roads as no public right of way; just the second condition is being bet and thats through the LA being the land owner etc /

for public place just look up any of the Drink Driving or Offensive Weapons authorities. Essentially if the public can access the area, lawfully, its a public place.

barnaman

The Director of Public Prosecutions -v- Gregory [2015] IEHC 706 (13 November 2015)

One more recent authorities although seem some bad logic is saying that an authorisation may be bad for naming a road that is too long such as M50 as anywhere along the M50 can still be a place and judge already said that place is to be ascribed the definition in OED .. "to borrow the definition of a “place” from the Oxford Online Dictionary, the “place” named in an authorisation meets the standard of being “a particular position, point, or area in space; a location”"