A District Court judge dismissed a prosecution alleging that a man refused to provide a breath sample after ruling that the garda’s evidence of what the man allegedly said through an interpreter was inadmissible hearsay.
Judge Brian O’Shea delivered the judgment at Gorey District Court on 5 February 2020. The case concerned a charge under section 12(1) of the Road Traffic Act 2010, as amended. The defence applied for an acquittal at the close of the prosecution case.
The accused, identified in the judgment as Atilla Mike, was described as a Hungarian national who did not speak English. The prosecuting garda spoke English but not Hungarian. An interpreter joined by telephone on loudspeaker and translated between them during the procedure.
The garda testified that the accused would not provide the sample, despite being shown how to use the device and being told that refusing was a criminal offence. The judge said that, without the alleged utterance, the accused’s behaviour alone could not amount to a failure or refusal. The interpreter was not called as a witness.
The defence argued that the garda could report what the interpreter had said in English, but had no personal knowledge of what the accused said in Hungarian. The judge reviewed decisions from other jurisdictions concerning evidence translated through an interpreter. He concluded that the interpreter was a crucial prosecution witness when the alleged utterance was relied on to prove an element of the offence.
The judgment distinguished that conclusion from a broader question about what evidence might suffice if an interpreter did testify. The judge’s comments on whether general confirmation of translation accuracy would be enough were expressly obiter: they were not necessary to decide this case. He noted that Irish law had no directly relevant decision before him and that foreign authority was persuasive only.
On the case before him, the interpreter had not testified, so the sufficiency of an interpreter’s evidence did not arise. The garda’s account of the accused’s alleged words was inadmissible hearsay, leaving no evidence to prove the alleged refusal. The judge granted the defence application and dismissed the case. The judgment records no further order.