Bunreacht Tuatha Érenn

 

The Working Constitution of Tuatha Érenn

Version 3, 22 October 2026. For adoption at the founding at Uisneach, 7–8 November 2026.

 

This Bunreacht is made under the Cairt Chomharbais Tuatha Érenn (the Charter of the Heirship of Tuatha Érenn), called the Cairt from here on. The Cairt comes first. Anything here that contradicts it is void, to that extent (Cairt 8.2). The Cairt says what the body is and what can never change. This Bunreacht says how the body works day to day.

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This Bunreacht in brief

• Membership (Article One). Who may join, how, the five grades of standing, what members may do and what they owe, and how they leave.

• The óenach and the vote (Article Two). The óenach (gathering) is the members’ voice. How it is called, how many must be present, and how it decides.

• The tiers (Article Three). The tuath, the mórthuath, the cóiced and the whole body, and why no tier compels another.

• The council and the offices (Article Four). Who runs the day-to-day work, and the rules every office-holder keeps.

• An Coimirce (Article Five). The safeguard: the office that can stop wrongdoing but never direct.

• The safeguards (Article Six). Separate keys, the kin rule, term limits, and the other walls against capture.

• The courts (Article Seven). The brehons, how a matter is heard, and the member’s promise to use no other courts.

• The twelve functions (Article Eight). What the body does for its members, one function at a time.

• Money (Article Nine). Where the money comes from, and why no one can grow rich or buy a say.

• Comhar CLG (Article Ten). The body’s one company in the State’s system, and its limits.

• The record (Article Eleven). How an taifead (the record) is kept, sealed and protected.

• Rights and dealings (Article Twelve). Freedom without harm, and refusing to deal.

• Clans, marriage and the young (Article Thirteen). The clan’s own business, and the safety of sons and daughters first.

• Defence (Article Fourteen). Strong, skilled young people; defence only.

• Culture (Article Fifteen). The language, the body’s storytellers, and ceremony.

• Change, leaving and ending (Article Sixteen). How this Bunreacht changes, and what happens if a tuath leaves or the body ends.

The Irish words used are explained where they first appear in each article, and in the glossary at the end. Parts marked core are protected by the Cairt’s core rule (Cairt 7.3) and change only that way.

 

Article One: Membership

1.1 Who may join. Any man or woman in Ireland who takes the covenant of the body may join. No one is kept out by the line they come from, by wealth or by station. Gaelic lineage is honoured and recorded. It is a path into the body, never a gate.

1.2 Who may not join, or may be put out. A man or woman is refused, or put out, for their conduct, never for their creed:

• refusing to keep to the body’s courts in matters within the body’s life;

• acting to harm the body or its members;

• using a position of power to harm the people, where the body’s courts find it on the evidence;

• bringing the State against another member by their own choice (Cairt 6.4).

1.3 Ireland only. Tuatha form in Ireland. Those of Gaelic heritage in Scotland and Mann are friends of the body, and it will help them set up their own in their own lands.

1.4 Joining.

• A man or woman joins by taking Cairt an Aontaithe (the joining covenant) at an óenach (gathering).

• A member of standing vouches for them, and two members witness.

• They are given the Cairt, this Bunreacht and the disclosure pack beforehand, to read in their own time. They autograph the joining covenant, printed in advance with its own Tuatha Érenn number: that they have read the Cairt and this Bunreacht, endorse and accept them, and will keep to them and by every decision properly made under them. That includes the promise to bring every dispute with another member to the body’s courts, and only there, and what follows if they break it (Cairt 6.4).

• What every joiner must be told plainly is set out in the joining covenant itself. The other parts of the disclosure pack are given, and autographed, before any act they cover.

• The joining is entered in an taifead (the record) with their calling, their Tuatha Érenn number (11.2a), the date, the place, their tuath and the witnesses.

• No oath in the State’s form is asked.

Joining costs nothing, and membership has no end date (9.1).

1.5 The five grades. Standing in the body is earned over about seven years. It is never bought and never inherited.

 

Grade                                What it means                           Time in the grade before moving up

1. Cuairteoir (visitor)         Welcome at gatherings.

                                          No key and no vote.                  At least one óenach, until a member of                                                                                                  standing vouches for them.

 

2. Dílteach

(vouched associate)         Vouched for by a member of

                                         standing; plain service to the

                                         tuath. A son or daughter of the

                                         body enters here, at eighteen,

                                         through the coming-of-age rite

                                        (1.10).                                                 A year and a day.

 

3. Comhalta

(seasoned member)         A full member who votes in the

                                         tuath from the day they reach this

                                         grade.                                                Three years, after which they

                                                                                                   also vote on the core and may move                                                                                                       up.

4. Feidhmeannach

(key-holder)                      May hold one key or minor office.        Three years.

 

5. Comhairleoir

(eligible for council)           May stand for the council.

 

So a newcomer reaches the vote in about a year, and the council in about seven. Moving up is entered in the record by the óenach of the member’s tuath, on the record of their service. Founding members enter at grade three (1.5a).

Elders and guardians follow their own track (6.4). No one gains a grade by giving money.

1.5a The founding and the formation years. The body cannot wait seven years for its first votes. So:

• Founding members. Everyone who takes the covenant at Uisneach, or at any óenach or founding sitting before Bealtaine 2027, is a founding member, entered at grade three, with a vote from the day they join.

• The legitimacy vote. At Bealtaine 2027 the founding members, voting openly, ratify the Cairt and this Bunreacht, correct anything they choose to, and choose the first formation council.

• The formation years run from Bealtaine 2027 to Bealtaine 2034. Councils serve two-year terms, and founding members and later members of grade four or above may stand.

• The founders’ acts. Until the ratification óenach at Bealtaine 2027, the founders may act together to set the body up: its texts, its record, its first offices and Comhar CLG. Every such act is entered with its reasons, and stands unless the ratification óenach undoes it. No act of the founding is void because a founder also sat on the first An Coimirce (5.4).

• After formation, the ordinary rules apply to everyone, founders and founding members included.

The detail is in the Formation Plan.

1.6 What members may do.

• Take part in the óenach of their tuath, and of every tier above.

• Bring a matter to the body’s courts.

• Be held in honour under lóg n-enech (honour-price: a man’s or woman’s standing in the body).

• Share in the body’s culture, ceremony and learning.

• Hold an office they are chosen for, once their grade allows.

• Place ground with the body, and have their clan’s records kept.

• Have their hearth protected by the tuath (Cairt 2.5).

• See their own record at any time.

1.7 What members owe.

• To keep the Cairt, this Bunreacht, and the covenants they have made.

• To deal with everyone in good faith and with honour.

• To bring every dispute with another member to the body’s courts, and only there. A member never brings the State against another member: not its courts, and not its tribunals, commissions, boards, ombudsmen, regulators, inspectors or agencies, or any office or officer of the State that can hear, decide, investigate or enforce a matter between men and women (Cairt 6.4). Grave crime and danger to anyone’s life or safety are the one exception: anyone may bring them to anyone, at any time (7.13).

• To keep the judgments of the body’s courts.

• To speak and act, in the State’s forums too, in a way that does not undermine the body’s position.

• To tell the truth in the record, and to keep their contact details in it up to date.

1.8 Leaving.

• Any man, woman or clan may leave at any time, with no reason given, by telling the Keeper of the Record or the óenach.

• The record is updated. A member who leaves may take a full copy of their own entries.

• Covenants already made are honoured to their term.

• A dispute that arose while both people were members stays with the body’s courts after either one leaves (Cairt 6.4).

1.9 Suspension, putting out, and return.

• Suspension. A member’s standing may be suspended only by the body’s courts, for repeated and unmended breach of honour, refusal to make good, or harm to the body. Suspension is to restore, never to punish.

• Putting out. A member is put out only on two keys: the brehons find the breach after a fair hearing, and the óenach puts the member out on that finding, as a weighty matter (2.5).

• What is lost. A member put out loses every right and share they hold under the body’s covenants: their standing and offices, their recorded rights in clan ground, settled ground and the line, their place in the tuath’s fund, and the protection of their hearth. Everything the former member loses goes back to the line it came from, never to the body. Where no one of their line remains in the body, what they lose is held until anything they owe under a judgment of the body’s courts is made good, and for at least a year and a day in case kin come forward; then the former member is made whole. The home they live in, on their own or their clan’s ground, is never held. What they hold in their own right, outside the body’s covenants, is theirs, and is never touched. Their kin are not put out with them unless the brehons find that they took part, helped, or knowingly gained (Cairt 6.4).

• Return. Return is never automatic. It needs restitution made, and two-thirds of the óenach of the member’s tuath.

1.10 Coming of age, and no one a member by blood.

• Eighteen years after being born, a son or daughter comes of age. At the óenach after that day, they may pass the coming-of-age rite: the Proclamation is read to them, their clan vouches for them, and they autograph the joining covenant. They enter at grade two, and vote once their year and a day is served.

• No one is a member by blood. Sons and daughters are recorded with their clan and welcome at every gathering. Each becomes a member only by taking the joining covenant themselves, once they come of age (Cairt 7.2, never 9).

• Keys and the council are held only by members who are at least twenty-one years from being born, as well as of the right grade.

 

Article Two: The Óenach and the Vote

 

2.1 The óenach is sovereign. At each tier, the óenach (gathering) of the members is the body’s voice. Every other office answers to it.

2.2 One vote each. Every member of grade three or above who is of age has one vote in the óenach. No one votes for another, and no one has more than one vote.

2.3 Clans and the council. The council of a tuath is elected by its clans, one vote to each clan, from members of grade five.

2.4 When the óenach meets. Each gathering is held on or near the old feast, usually the nearest weekend:

• The tuath: at Bealtaine (about 1 May) and Samhain (about 1 November).

• The cóiced (province): at Imbolc (about 1 February).

• The whole body, in an tÓenach (the national gathering): at Lúnasa (about 1 August).

An óenach may also be called by the council, by An Coimirce (the safeguard), or by a fifth of the members of the tier.

As of old, the óenach is assembly, court and fair at once: the record and the accounts are read out, judgments are given aloud, the body’s stories are told, and there are games and trade. It is held in peace. No one comes armed, and no quarrel is pursued there except before the brehons.

2.5 How the óenach decides. The óenach seeks agreement first. Where agreement cannot be reached after full deliberation, it votes. The bigger the matter, the more members must be present and the longer the notice (Cairt 4.8):

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• Notice reaches every member. It is published, and sent to each member at the contact details they have entered in the record. Keeping those up to date is the member’s own job: notice sent there counts as notice given.

• Proof that every member was told (weighty and grave matters). Notice goes to each member by at least two means: a text, an email, a letter or a call. Whoever sends it records each sending, with the date, and stakes their honour-price that it was done. Where a member has not confirmed, a further attempt is made by another means. For a grave matter, a member of the tuath also calls to them or speaks to them directly. An Coimirce checks this proof before the óenach sits.

• No proof, no decision. A weighty or grave decision taken without that proof is void. Anyone who calls a vote while keeping members from knowing of it commits a wrong in office.

• Nothing else is decided. Only what was in the notice is decided. Anything else can only be put to a later óenach.

• No packing. On a weighty or grave matter, only those who were members of voting grade on the day the notice went out may vote.

• When too few come. An ordinary matter goes to the next óenach, which may then decide it with a fifth present. A weighty or grave matter never lowers the number needed; it waits until enough come.

• Members at rest. No one is removed for drifting away. A member who has taken no part for three years (not attended, not voted from afar, not answered any notice) is entered as at rest. They keep every right, they are still sent every notice, and they may come and vote. They are simply not counted when working out how many must be present. They count again the moment they take part. Before anyone is entered as at rest, they are told by two means and given 42 days to answer. No one is entered as at rest once notice of an óenach has gone out, until it has sat. An Coimirce checks the at-rest list before every weighty and grave sitting.

• An Coimirce certifies every weighty and grave decision before it takes effect: that notice was given, the roll was kept, and the count was true.

• Every vote is open. Every vote is cast openly and entered against the voter’s calling: for, against or abstaining, with the reasons given. Votes from afar (2.8) are entered the same way. There is no secret ballot, ever (Cairt 4.8). The cost of an awkward moment is worth paying for a vote no one can fake.

• Anyone can put a matter forward, with the support of a fifth of the members of the tier, or through An Coimirce.

• The core and the nevers. The core changes only by the core rule (Cairt 7.4). What never changes (Cairt 7.2) cannot be changed at all.

• 2.6 Law from custom, never from enactment. The body makes no statutes. Its law grows from recorded custom and the judgments of its courts.

• What lapses. When the óenach decides how something is to be done for a time (a spending plan, a building programme, a rule for the gatherings), it adopts it as a covenant of policy with an end date, and that lapses unless the óenach renews it.

• What never lapses. Judgments of the body’s courts, covenants between members, clan covenants, entries in the Book of the Land, the Cairt and this Bunreacht. These stand until they are changed in their own way.

• 2.7 Who keeps what. A higher tier does not take the matters of a lower one, and a lower tier does not settle the matters of a higher one. Where a matter belongs to more than one tier, the tiers meet and decide together.

• 2.8 Those who cannot be there. The óenach is those who come. Being there is part of belonging (Cairt 4.9).

• A member who is old, ill, abroad, caring for someone, or kept away by something they could not change may take part from afar. Being busy is not a reason.

• They join live, seen and heard, by video, or by phone where video is not possible, and the Keeper of the Record confirms who they are. Or they send their vote in writing on a matter in the notice, witnessed by two members.

• The reason is recorded with their vote, and the óenach may question it.

• A member who takes part from afar at two gatherings in a row must come themselves to the next, unless the reason is lasting: age, illness, living abroad, or caring for someone.

• No one casts another’s vote.

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Article Three: The Tiers

 

3.1 The tuath. The tuath is the local body of a people in their place. It can form from about seven clans. It grows toward 1,000–1,500 men and women of age so that it can meet its own needs, and it divides in two once it passes 1,500. No member is obliged to supply any of those needs. At the start, the whole body acts as a single tuath.

3.2 The mórthuath (great tuath). When a cóiced holds more than nine tuatha, all its tuatha group into mórthuatha, and none stands alone at the cóiced. Each mórthuath has one equal voice at the cóiced, however big it is, so that large areas cannot swamp small ones.

3.3 The cóiced (province).

• There are five cóiceda: Ulaid (Ulster), Connachta (Connacht), Laigin (Leinster), Mumu (Munster) and Mide (Meath).

• They are how the body is laid out, never a claim to territory. No assembly place appears in any public text; the founding at Uisneach is the one stated exception.

• Each cóiced has a light structure: its óenach, a committee of one member from each tuath or mórthuath (no more than nine), and a convenor elected by that committee for two years, never from the same tuath twice in a row.

• The cóiced coordinates the matters its tuatha share. It never governs them.

3.4 Tuatha Érenn. The whole body is all the tuatha and cóiceda together, meeting in an tÓenach.

3.5 No tier compels.

• The tiers carry responsibility, not authority. No tier compels the tier below it.

• No tier depends on any one tuath.

• A tuath may leave, as a grave matter (2.5), and partner with others (16.4).

• A clan may move to another tuath at any time, by its own choice, entered in the record. A tuath that leans on one productive clan and gives nothing back may lose it, and should.

• A larger tuath may not lure a clan away from a smaller one with gifts, offices or promises. Where it does, the clan’s move stands, and the luring is a wrong heard by the brehons.

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Article Four: The Council and the Offices

 

4.1 The council runs the day-to-day. Each tuath has a council of five to nine, elected as Article Two sets out. It runs the tuath’s day-to-day business. It does not set the tuath’s direction, judge its disputes, or keep its culture.

4.2 The council offices.

• Cathaoirleach (chair): one year, rotating among the council.

• Rúnaí (secretary).

• Coimeádaí an Taifid (Keeper of the Record): keeps an taifead. It is not theirs.

• Cisteoir (treasurer).

• Planning and safety officer: looks after safety on the body’s ground (Article Eight, function 10).

The stewards of the body’s own ground (Article Eight, function 6) work alongside the council’s administration, but are chosen by the óenach.

4.3 The independent offices. Three offices stand apart from the council, and each answers to An Coimirce:

• The brehons (Article Seven).

• The office of culture (Article Fifteen).

• An Treoraí (the Guide). Elected by the óenach for five years, on a plan for those five years. The Guide coordinates the body’s long work (food, shelter, energy, learning) by the plan the óenach adopts, which needs two-thirds. The Guide has no power to compel and holds no key. Clans that choose not to take part in the plan do not take its benefits. A Guide never serves two terms in a row. Because the Guide’s five years are close to two ordinary three-year terms, one Guide’s term counts as two governing terms toward the lifetime limit of four (6.4).

4.4 Outside eyes. Every council and significant office includes at least one man or woman from outside the founding circle and outside the day-to-day of the body, wherever the numbers allow.

4.5 The founding circle gives way. The founders will carry great weight in the early years. Articles Five and Six exist so that this weight cannot harden into rule. The aim is that within ten years the founding circle holds no more than a third of any council.

4.6 How every office is held. Every office and key is held as the Cairt sets out (Cairt Article Three): for those who come after, never as one’s own. In short:

• interests are declared in the record before anyone acts, and kept up to date;

• honour-price is staked and sureties given;

• the covenant of office is made aloud at the óenach that chose them;

• clean hands, no one judging their own cause, reasons for every significant act, and a fair hearing for anyone affected;

• an account given aloud at the óenach each year: what they held, did and spent, and how the people they serve have fared;

• no gift kept beyond a small token whose value the óenach sets;

• speaking for the body only on a recorded decision.

4.7 Every office has its secnap (second).

• Every office and key has a secnap (second), chosen at the same time as the holder and in the same way, never close kin of the holder.

• The secnap learns beside the holder, sees everything the office holds, and steps in at once if the holder dies, cannot act, leaves the body, or is suspended, until the óenach chooses again.

• The chief brehon’s secnap is the successor chosen on the day the chief brehon takes office (7.3).

• While a tuath is small, one member may be secnap to two offices, with An Coimirce’s written consent. No one is secnap to an office that oversees one they already hold.

• Everything an office holds is kept where the secnap and An Coimirce can reach it. No password, account or key is known to only one man or woman (Cairt 3.6).

4.8 The handing-on. Every change of office-holder is made in the open (Cairt 3.7).

• Within fourteen days, the outgoing and incoming holders draw up an account together: what the office holds, what it owes, what is open and what is unfinished.

• Both autograph it, An Coimirce witnesses it, and it is entered in the record.

• If the outgoing holder has died or cannot act, the secnap and An Coimirce draw it up from the record.

• An office-holder who will not hand on breaks their covenant. Their sureties are called on, and their honour-price is held as forfeit until it is done.

4.9 Compensation for service. Men and women who give their time to the body’s work, on its behalf, are compensated for it. The óenach sets the compensation openly, before nominations for the office open. It is never changed during the term for the one who holds the office, and no one sets their own (Cairt 3.12).

4.10 After office. For a year and a day after leaving an office, no one takes any gift, work or dealing from anyone they dealt with on the body’s behalf, except through the body and in the open record (Cairt 3.11).

4.11 When the State presses an office-holder, or their own life goes wrong. These are set out in the Cairt (3.8 and 3.9): the office-holder tells at once and is never blamed for what the State compels; nothing is ever hidden or destroyed; and a holder whose own troubles touch the office stands aside to their secnap, with no loss of standing, until it is resolved.

 

Article Five: An Coimirce (the safeguard) (core)

5.1 What it is. An Coimirce is the office that watches against capture. It can stop. It can never direct.

5.2 At every tier. There is an An Coimirce at the tuath, the cóiced and the national tier, so that a captured centre cannot capture the watch.

5.3 Who sits on it.

• Two or three members at each tier, chosen by the óenach from the elders: former office-holders past their time out of office, and those who have reached their ceiling, all with no upheld strike against them.

• A member of An Coimirce holds no other office or key while serving.

• Each serves one term of three years at a time. A member may be chosen again, but only after a full term out.

• Every choice is an open vote of the óenach, as a weighty matter (2.5), taken after the outgoing An Coimirce’s record for its term is read aloud.

• The óenach may remove a member only after the brehons find a breach, and then as a grave matter (2.5): half of those entitled to vote present at two sittings at least three months apart, and two-thirds at each. This keeps a captured óenach from clearing the watch quickly, without leaving a bad member in place for years.

5.4 The founders guard the start.

• The first An Coimirce at Uisneach is drawn from the founders, who take no other office beyond setting the body up with the other founders until the ratification óenach (1.5a).

• Through the formation years, to Bealtaine 2034, founders may sit on An Coimirce outside the term rule in 5.3, because their place there rests on the founding itself.

• They are confirmed by open vote at the ratification óenach at Bealtaine 2027, and again at each formation election. A founder not confirmed steps down, and the óenach chooses from the elders.

• From Bealtaine 2034, An Coimirce is chosen only under 5.3, founders included.

5.4a The council of elders. Every former member of An Coimirce, and every former office-holder in good standing with no upheld strike, sits in the council of elders. It watches An Coimirce and the offices, and may address any óenach with its concerns, which are entered in the record. It has no other power: it cannot suspend, direct or block anything.

5.5 Its powers, and only these.

• To suspend. It may freeze any decision or act that breaks the Cairt’s core, a never (Cairt 7.2), or the duty of openness, and refer it straight to the óenach or the body’s courts. Every suspension is reported.

• To inspect. It may see any record, account or dealing of any office, the independent offices included.

• To convene. It may call an óenach at any tier.

• To start a recall of any office-holder, the brehons and the Guide included.

• To certify. It certifies every weighty and grave decision of an óenach before it takes effect (2.5): that notice was given, the roll was kept, the count was true, and nothing in it breaks the core or a never on its face.

• To witness. It witnesses every handing-on of office (4.8), and gives or refuses written consent where a key is doubled or a secnap stands to two offices (4.7, 6.3).

• To report. It reports to the óenach every year, in the open, and every seventh year reports on how each never has been kept (Cairt 7.2).

5.6 The óenach has the last word. An Coimirce never decides the matter it has frozen. A frozen decision goes back to the óenach that made it. A question of whether something breaks the core or a never goes to the brehons. The óenach never overturns a judgment; it may only ask for it to be reviewed (7.7).

5.7 Strikes. Anyone found by the óenach or the courts, on An Coimirce’s referral, to have acted against the core may never sit on An Coimirce, and may never hold any key.

5.8 Anyone may bring a matter. Any member or clan may bring a matter to An Coimirce, and so may the body’s storytellers (15.3). None of them is part of it.

5.9 Every year, aloud. At the national óenach each year, An Coimirce asks aloud: has anyone come to hold too much? The answer is recorded.

 

Article Six: The Safeguards (core)

 

6.1 Five keys, five hands. The body’s five keys are the record, the treasury, the holdings (ground), the courts and the agenda. No one holds two keys at once.

6.2 The kin rule. No two members of close kin hold keys at the same time. Close kin means husband, wife or partner, mother, father, son, daughter, brother and sister, and anyone sharing a household.

6.3 The founding years. While the body is too small to put every key in separate hands, a key may be doubled only with An Coimirce’s written consent. Each doubling is entered in the record with its reasons, reviewed at every óenach, and lapses on its own once the tuath passes fifty members of voting grade.

6.4 Terms in office.

• A term is three years.

• No one serves more than two terms in a row, and then sits out a full term.

• No one serves more than four governing terms in a lifetime, counting every seat together. After that, they join the elders.

• Terms are staggered, so that a council never turns over all at once.

• Key-holders rotate on their own schedule, not only with the council above them.

• Stewards of ground are the exception: they hold until they die, can no longer act, stand down, or are removed for cause, because every change of the paper costs the body and puts the ground at risk (Cairt 2.10).

6.5 Emergencies end on their own.

• An emergency is declared only by the council, with An Coimirce’s written consent, entered in the record with its reasons and an end date.

• No emergency power is taken without an end date, and no end date is more than a year and a day away.

• It lapses on its own on that date, unless an óenach renews it.

• Any óenach may undo it at any time.

• No emergency ever touches the core or a never.

• An act the óenach approves becomes precedent.

6.6 Speaking freely, and those who speak up.

• Speaking at the óenach is free. Anyone who speaks their mind at an óenach, or raises a concern about the body, an office or an office-holder, in good faith and for the good of the body, is never penalised for it in any way: not in standing, office, dealings or welcome.

• Punishing speech in good faith is a wrong. Anyone who tries to punish, shame or push out a member for speaking in good faith commits a wrong in office, or against the body, and answers for it in the body’s courts.

• Time to speak. At a large óenach, the chair keeps an open list of speakers. Anyone backed by ten members is sure of time to speak. Anyone may put a concern in writing into the record at any time, and it is read out or summed up aloud at the next óenach.

• Petty quarrels do not belong at the óenach. A personal quarrel between members goes to the body’s courts, not the floor of the gathering. Whoever brings a petty dispute to the óenach to shame another is called to order, and the óenach may record its disapproval.

• Those who raise capture or wrongdoing in good faith are protected from any loss of standing for doing so. A complaint made in bad faith is itself a false word (7.11).

• The body watches for both: for those who silence speech in good faith, and for those who abuse the óenach with spite.

6.7 The outside audit. The body’s accounts and dealings are audited every year by someone outside the body, and the audit is published.

6.8 Complaints against a founder. While the body establishes itself, its standing must not be put at risk by a quarrel it has not yet heard. So a complaint against a founder is heard first by the founding circle with An Coimirce present, within a short fixed time. The founder accused hears every accusation. Any founder with an interest takes no part. The outcome is recorded. If there is a real concern, it goes to the óenach. Outside media are never used.

6.9 No key-holder stands for State office. No one holding a key in the body stands for State office. Members vote or stand as they choose, in their own right, never on behalf of the body, and the body takes no side in the State’s elections or referendums (Cairt 5.9).

 

Article Seven: The Courts

 

7.1 The body’s own courts (core). The brehons (breithimh, the body’s judges) hear the matters of the members who have covenanted to them. Their law is Brehon in spirit: making good, never punishment; honour, sureties and the conscience of the community, never force.

7.2 Who may judge. Judgment is given only by brehons on the body’s panel, chosen for learning and proven character. Training as a brehon is open to all members, and is required of anyone who seeks the council or An Coimirce. The body aims to meet the cost of that training, as its means allow.

7.3 The chief brehon, and the panel.

• The panel brehons serve without a term limit, for as long as their standing holds. Each is reviewed every year in the open: appeals that overturned them, complaints upheld, and judgments the community would not keep. Recall reaches them like any office.

• The chief brehon holds the courts key: keeping the courts’ list, record and panel, and seeing that every matter is heard. They are chosen by the óenach of the tuath for three years.

• No automatic rotation. At the end of each term, the óenach votes openly on whether to continue the chief brehon, as a weighty matter, after An Coimirce reads out their record for that term. A good chief brehon can be kept on.

• The cap. No one is chief brehon for more than three terms in a row (nine years). They then return to the panel for at least one term before they can be chosen again, so that no one becomes the court. This is an exception to the ordinary term limits (6.4).

• The secnap. A successor, the chief brehon’s secnap, is chosen on the day the chief brehon takes office, so that they can learn beside them. The secnap also sits as a panel brehon in their own right.

7.4 Choosing your brehon. The parties may choose the tuath’s chief brehon, or any brehon on the body’s panel whom both agree on. That free choice is the guard against a captured court. The chief brehon must hear a matter brought to them, or pass it to a brehon under their watch. Any other brehon may decline, with reasons.

7.5 Settling without judgment. Two parties may ask anyone they both trust to help them settle. That one mediates and does not judge. What is agreed is entered as the parties’ own agreement. It is not a judgment, and it sets no precedent.

7.6 The ladder.

• First hearing: one brehon both parties choose, or a panel of three for contested or serious matters.

• Appeal: a panel of five at the cóiced, or at the national tier while there is no cóiced, at least three of whom did not hear the matter.

• Matters touching the Cairt or the core: the óenach, by the core rule. Other questions on this Bunreacht: an tÓenach, as a weighty matter.

• A claim against the body itself: three brehons, one chosen by each side and the third by those two (Cairt 7.2, never 6).

7.7 A judgment the community will not keep. If the community will not follow a judgment, and keeps dealing with the one found in dishonour, that shows the judgment may be wrong. It is reviewed.

7.8 How brehons are held.

• Each brehon stakes their own honour-price on their judgments.

• Two members of standing stand surety for each brehon. If the brehon breaks faith, the sureties’ honour is touched too, and they press for it to be put right. A surety never pays another’s debt from their own means (7.10).

• Recall reaches the bench.

• No one is appointed for favour.

• No brehon hears a matter they have an interest in.

7.9 Honour-price. Lóg n-enech is a man’s or woman’s recorded standing in the body. It is staked when they take office or stand surety, and lost by false or corrupt conduct. It is never a scale that pays the well-born more.

• Standing, not a price. In the body, honour-price never sets what anyone pays or is paid.

• What it is for. The higher a member’s standing, the more they can be trusted with: to vouch for others, to stand surety, to hold a key, to steward ground.

• How it is lost. By false or corrupt conduct, found by the brehons. A wrong done by someone of high standing costs them more standing, not more money.

7.10 Sureties. A surety is a member who stands behind another’s promise, and stakes their own honour-price on it being kept.

• How it works. When someone promises to make good, or takes an office, a surety stands for them. If the promise is broken, the surety’s standing is touched too, and the surety presses the one they stood for to put it right. A surety is never made to pay another’s debt from their own means (Cód 6.4).

• Why it works. Standing matters to people who live among each other. This is how the old law held people to their word without a police force.

• The surety fund. The surety fund is kept under its own key, with published accounts. It is fed by a fixed share of every service fee and by gifts given for it, and is held mostly as members’ recorded pledges rather than as money in a bank (9.1). A member’s share is returned on their parting to whoever they choose.

7.11 False word. A false statement that damages a man’s or woman’s standing is a wrong, and the remedy is making good. Fair opinion and plain speech are not wrongs. Satire, in any medium, is free.

7.12 Open courts (core). Hearings are open and judgments are published with their reasons. A hearing is closed only for matters touching sons and daughters, the inside of a marriage or clan, or a victim of sexual harm. Even then, the judgment is published, at the national tier only, without saying who the parties are or anything that would let a neighbour know them. The parties and the brehons keep the full text.

7.13 Grave crime and danger.

• What is grave. Killing; rape and other sexual violence; abuse or neglect of the young; serious violence, or the threat of it; and kidnapping or holding anyone against their will.

• For now, grave crime is for the State. Anyone may bring it there, along with any danger to someone’s life or safety, at any time, and no one is ever penalised for doing so.

• Everything else between members is for the body’s courts, whatever the State’s statutes call it. The State has made thousands of offences; between members, almost all of them are matters for making good, and they are heard here.

• Where it is unclear whether something is grave, the body’s courts decide, and safety comes first while they do.

• The body keeps the right to hear grave crime itself in future, and the óenach will decide when (Cairt 6.5).

7.14 Our courts only. Every member has promised to bring every dispute with another member to the body’s courts, and never to bring the State against another member, in any of its forums (1.7; Cairt 6.4).

• Taken there without choosing. If an insurer, the State or anyone else brings a matter against a member without that member’s choice, the member has not broken the covenant. They tell the body at once, bring the matter to the body’s courts as well, and help the other side no more than they are forced to.

• Answering. A member brought before any State forum may answer there, and may put a judgment of the body’s courts before it, as the body’s judgment and nothing less.

• Breaking the covenant. A member who, by their own choice, brings the State against another member is put out and loses every right and share under the body’s covenants (1.9). What they hold in their own right is theirs, and is never touched.

• Plainly: the State’s courts keep their own say over what the State controls, whatever the body’s courts decide, and any State forum will hear anyone who comes to it. The covenant binds in honour and in the record.

7.15 The code. The body’s courts work by the Cód Breithiúnais (the book of judgments), which the óenach adopts and changes. Its core parts change only by the core rule (Cairt 7.3).

7.16 Hearing promptly. The courts hear every matter as soon as the circumstances reasonably allow, the serious and urgent first, and give judgment with reasons. Delay caused by one side counts against that side, never against the one waiting.

7.17 Hearing a member who will not come. Where a member who has been given notice will not answer or attend, the brehons may hear the matter without them, record why, and give judgment.

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