The Court of Appeal has ruled that an English-only breath-test statement could be treated as being in the prescribed form, despite regulations that included both English and Irish versions. The court allowed an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions and answered a District Court judge’s question in the negative.
The case arose from a drink-driving prosecution against Mihai Avadenei. A District Court judge had referred a legal question to the High Court after the defence argued that a printout from an Evidenzer breath-testing machine was inadmissible because it was in English only. The High Court agreed with the defence, holding that the statement was not “duly completed” under the Road Traffic Act 2010 and related 2011 regulations.
The Court of Appeal heard that the machine produced a statement recording 54 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The document was signed by Avadenei and the Garda who administered the test. At trial, the Garda said he had entered the details in English and that the machine was capable of producing an Irish-language printout, but had produced only an English-language document in this case.
The appeal concerned the form of the statement and its potential evidential use, not a final determination of the drink-driving charge. The Court of Appeal accepted that the 2011 regulations, read literally, prescribed a form containing both the English and Irish portions. It also agreed that the statutory requirements were strict because they were related to a penal provision.
However, the court held that section 12 of the Interpretation Act 2005 applied. That provision allows a deviation from a prescribed form if it does not materially affect the form’s substance or mislead in content or effect. The court found that omitting the Irish portion did not remove or alter information conveyed by the English portion and could not mislead about the document’s contents or effect.
The Court of Appeal therefore said the District Court judge would have been entitled to find that the statement was still in the prescribed form and, once completed as required, was “duly completed”. It allowed the DPP’s appeal and answered the referred question in the negative. The judgment did not itself decide the respondent’s guilt or direct a conviction; the case returned to the District Court for the prosecution to proceed subject to the court’s decision.