Sections 61 and 62 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 criminalised "buggery", which made sexual activity between two men illegal, and section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 criminalised "gross indecency" between men.

David Norris took, and lost, a case to the High Court in 1977 seeking a declaration that the laws of 1861 and 1885 which criminalised homosexual conduct were not in force since the enactment of the Constitution of Ireland.

Norris's Senior Counsel were Garrett Cooney and fellow member of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, Mary Robinson, who in 1990 would become the first female President of Ireland.

On the ground of the Christian nature of our State and on the grounds that the deliberate practice of homosexuality is morally wrong, that it is damaging to the health both of individuals and the public and, finally, that it is potentially harmful to the institution of marriage, I can find no inconsistency with the Constitution in the laws which make such conduct criminal.

In Norris v. Ireland (1988), the ECHR ruled, as it had done in Dudgeon v United Kingdom (1981) that the laws criminalising homosexuality were a breach of the Article 8 protection of privacy.