The High Court has refused to stop a judicial review brought by Stiofán Ó Conaire over the refusal to provide Irish-language translations of witness statements in a Dublin drink-driving prosecution.
Ó Conaire, a taxi driver and native Irish speaker from Ros Muc, Co Galway, was charged with drink driving on January 23, 2006. He told the District Court that he wanted to conduct his defence entirely through Irish.
An earlier judicial review concerning Irish versions of court rules, legislation, charge sheets and an intoxilyser certificate was later settled after the State provided or published the relevant Irish-language material.
When the criminal case returned to the District Court, Ó Conaire obtained a disclosure order and was sent two witness statements and a custody record. The statements were in English. His solicitors sought Irish versions, but the judgment records that their letters received no reply.
Ó Conaire then applied in the District Court for Irish translations. District Judge Uinsin Mac Gruairc refused the request, taking the view that oral interpretation available at the trial would adequately protect Ó Conaire’s right to conduct his case in Irish.
The High Court granted Ó Conaire leave in December 2007 to challenge that decision. The DPP subsequently asked the court to set that leave aside, arguing that the new proceedings were an abuse of process because the translation issue could have been raised during the earlier judicial review.
Mr Justice Ó Néill rejected that argument. He found it was at least arguable that the issue had not arisen during the earlier proceedings because the witness statements had not then been disclosed and no refusal to translate them had occurred.
The DPP also argued that judicial review should not interrupt an ongoing criminal case. The judge accepted that such intervention is generally undesirable, but noted that Ó Conaire’s prosecution remained at an early, pre-trial stage.
Crucially, the court was deciding only whether the earlier grant of leave should be withdrawn. It held that the DPP had produced no new evidence or legal proposition showing that leave should never have been granted. The application to set it aside was therefore refused.