Ireland ? Ireland passed an emergency bill Friday on underage sex, and the Supreme Court ordered a man at the center of the controversy to be reimprisoned for having sex with a 12-year-old girl.

Both developments came after public outrage about the Supreme Court’s decision last week to declare unconstitutional a 1935 law governing statutory rape of minors.

The Supreme Court threw out the law on the grounds it didn’t permit men accused of having sex with girls younger than 15 to claim they thought the girl was older.

A lower court on Tuesday granted freedom to a 41-year-old man who had been convicted of having sex with a 12-year-old. Three other men convicted of having sex with underage girls filed similar suits Thursday and Friday seeking to have their convictions quashed, and more than a dozen others were expected to do so in coming days.

But the government, facing a public outcry about the man’s release, appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court, and the five-judge panel Friday night ordered the man to be reimprisoned. Within three hours, police announced his arrest.