Does your front/back door not count?
I don't believe it does. I believe you have to put another door between you and the attacker. This stinks. Consider the case of you in your sitting room and your child upstairs in bed. By implication of the law you would have to wait in the sitting room while the intruder was in your hall. Personally, I'd come at the intruder if he came between me and my children and leave my fate in the hands of the jury.
I know FG have had bills in the Dail to change the law for at least 4 years. However, nothing has come of them yet.
The Times reported the following on 14 Nov:
"The legal position on the rights of law-abiding citizens to strike out against intruders is unclear. The Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 makes clear that reasonable force may be applied by somebody seeking to protect themselves or their family from injury, assault or detention. Force can also be used to protect one’s property from “destruction or damage caused by trespass”. However, where a citizen stands legally when simply confronting an intruder in their home in not specifically dealt with.
To further complicate matters, the Act allows for juries to consider whether a person finding an intruder in their home availed of an opportunity to retreat before using reasonable force. This appears to undermine the right to use force.
The Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, recently told the Dáil that intrusion into a home “should not be tolerated”. However, he recently rejected calls for the Government to support a Bill that Fine Gael claimed would give clarity to the level of force intruders could be met with. Ahern has said that the Law Reform Commission is currently reviewing the issue of legitimate defence, and that it would be foolish not to wait for that work to be completed. The commission would make its recommendations known within weeks, he said, and would produce draft legislation.
Whatever the recommendations, public debate around the issue is likely to remain emotive"
