The High Court has ordered Francis Ciarán Tobin’s surrender to Hungary to serve a prison sentence imposed there after a fatal road traffic incident. The order followed a second application by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, after a previous surrender application was refused in 2007 and that refusal was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2008.
The earlier application failed because the court found Tobin had not “fled” Hungary before serving his sentence, as then required by Irish law. A 2009 amendment removed that requirement for European arrest warrants issued after 29 August 2009. Hungary issued a new warrant on 17 September 2009, which was endorsed for execution in Ireland the following month. Tobin was arrested in November 2009.
The warrant said that in April 2000 Tobin was driving in Leányfalu, Hungary, when his car mounted a pavement and struck two children, aged five and two, who died at the scene. The Hungarian court convicted him of negligent road traffic violations causing death. The High Court found that the described conduct corresponded to dangerous driving, or dangerous driving causing death, under Irish law.
Tobin argued that bringing a second application after his success in the first was an abuse of process and that applying the amended law to him interfered with the courts’ earlier decision. The High Court rejected those arguments. It said the current application raised a different issue under the amended legislation: whether the court had jurisdiction to order surrender, rather than whether Tobin had fled Hungary. The judge also rejected the argument that the amendment was unconstitutional or that the Interpretation Act protected Tobin from a renewed application.
The court found the warrant sufficiently clear about the sentence. It said the sentence remained three years, with the possibility of release after 18 months at the discretion of a Hungarian penitentiary judge; it was not a sentence with the final 18 months automatically suspended. The judge was not satisfied that the warrant misled Tobin or failed to meet statutory requirements.
The court also rejected objections based on the Act’s publication date, family rights, alleged discrimination over serving the sentence in Ireland, threats and adverse publicity, the fairness of the Hungarian trial, and delay. It found no evidence establishing a reasonable risk to Tobin’s life or bodily integrity in Hungarian custody, and said his family circumstances did not meet the exceptional threshold to prevent surrender. The judgment ordered surrender; it did not determine any new issue about the underlying conviction.