The High Court has rejected challenges by four motorists who argued that access to software and technical information for the Lion Intoxilyser IRL 6000 was necessary to fairly contest drink-driving prosecutions.
Patrick Dowling sought to quash his June 2007 District Court conviction for driving with a breath-alcohol concentration above the legal limit. Patrick Hilliard, Michael Halton and Bronagh Cronin sought orders preventing the Director of Public Prosecutions from continuing their cases.
The applicants argued that documents concerning the machine’s handling of mouth alcohol and alcohol in the surrounding air had not been disclosed. They also sought access to the machine’s software, contending that without it they could not meaningfully challenge the statutory breath-test printout relied upon by the prosecution.
The Medical Bureau of Road Safety disputed that this created unfairness. Its principal analyst, David Reynolds, described calibration, installation and six-monthly testing procedures, together with internal safeguards intended to abort a test where the machine detected an error or malfunction. He said the Bureau had seen no evidence that the relevant Intoxilyser was operating incorrectly.
Mr Justice O’Keeffe relied heavily on earlier High Court and Supreme Court rulings concerning the same type of apparatus. Those decisions had upheld the statutory system and emphasised safeguards including calibration checks, a 17.5% deduction from readings, a 20-minute observation period and an accused person’s ability to seek inspection of the machine.
The judge found no evidential basis for saying that Dowling’s machine was defective or incapable of meeting its design standards. He held that the absence of access to the software did not, on the evidence, breach constitutional justice or fair procedures.
O’Keeffe J also found that the District Court had acted within its jurisdiction and that any alleged error was one for appeal rather than judicial review unless the proceedings were fundamentally flawed.
For the remaining applicants, the court held that stopping their prosecutions before trial would require exceptional circumstances and a demonstrated real or serious risk of unfairness. That threshold had not been met. All four applications were dismissed.