The High Court has refused an application to extend time for a judicial review challenge to a Circuit Court conviction for drink-driving, and said the requested substantive relief would be refused. Any stay on the Circuit Court order was to be lifted.
In a judgment delivered on 10 March 2023, Ms Justice O’Regan ruled that Liam Mac Fhlanach had not shown a good and sufficient reason to extend the time limit under Order 84 of the Rules of the Superior Courts. The court said the delay was not shown to be outside his control or caused by circumstances he could not reasonably have anticipated.
The challenge concerned Judge Eoin Garavan’s refusal, on 15 October 2020, to direct an acquittal or state a consultative case on a legal question about blood samples taken in hospital under the Road Traffic Act 2010. The applicant had argued that the judge did not exercise his discretion judicially. The Circuit Court affirmed his conviction after an appeal from the District Court.
The case arose after a road traffic accident in Spiddal, County Galway, on 18 September 2018. At Galway University Hospital, Garda Gabriel O’Brien obtained a blood sample after the applicant chose a blood specimen. The proposed legal question concerned whether evidence was needed that the doctor involved was a doctor treating the person under section 14 of the Act.
The applicant relied in part on a later High Court judgment in DPP v Cullen, delivered in March 2021, as a development in the law. But Justice O’Regan said Cullen did not explain the delay in bringing the judicial review because the complaint about the Circuit Court judge’s discretion was already grounded in the earlier Supreme Court decision in McKenna v Deery. A complaint that the prosecution had failed to alert the judge to Cullen was no longer being pursued.
The court also noted that judicial review had been contemplated in October 2020 if the prosecution would not consent to the matter being re-entered. A further application before the Circuit Court on 4 December 2020 did not extend the judicial review time limit, and about five and a half months passed after that hearing before leave was sought.
Justice O’Regan said the respondent disputed that the applicant would have obtained a direction or acquittal based on Cullen. She also cited the public interest in expeditious criminal proceedings and legal certainty. The court made no finding on the underlying drink-driving conviction’s merits because the extension of time was refused.
The judge’s provisional view was that the Director of Public Prosecutions should receive costs, to be adjudicated if not agreed. The parties were given 14 days to make written submissions on costs; absent submissions, the proposed order would be made.