The High Court declined to determine a judicial review challenge to a €1,000 independent surety requirement imposed after Wolfgang Koltze was convicted in the District Court, finding that he had not first used an available route to seek a change to the recognisances. The court made no ruling on whether the surety requirement was reasonable.
Koltze was convicted of nine offences on 19 April 2017 and sentenced to a total of 10 months in prison, with the sentences to run consecutively. He indicated that he intended to appeal. The District Judge set recognisances at €100 on his own bond, with no cash lodgement, and required an independent surety of €1,000, with no cash alternative.
Koltze argued that he could not obtain a surety and that the condition was beyond his means, preventing him from securing release pending his appeal. He said he was a foreign national without friends or family in Ireland who could act as surety. The judgment records that he had not told the District Judge he would have difficulty obtaining one when the recognisances were set. The Director of Public Prosecutions also argued that he had provided no evidence of efforts to find a surety.
The DPP submitted that the High Court could consider an application to vary or revoke the recognisances under its original, inherent jurisdiction in bail matters. The High Court agreed. It said the absence of a statutory appeal against the District Court’s surety requirement did not prevent the High Court from exercising that jurisdiction. It also rejected the DPP’s separate argument that District Court rules provided a remedy for changing a condition relating to an independent surety.
The court held that Koltze could have brought a motion in the High Court to vary or revoke the recognisances, but had not done so. It therefore found that he had failed to use an alternative remedy and declined to decide the merits of the judicial review challenge.
The judge said the question of whether the District Judge acted reasonably required scrutiny of Koltze’s claim that he could not obtain a surety. The court made no determination on that issue. It said Koltze could apply through the High Court bail list to vary or revoke the recognisances and proposed staying the committal order to give him time to do so.