The High Court refused three applications for release from detention, finding that the District Court had begun hearing the applications to extend detention before the existing detention periods expired. The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Michael Peart on 5 March 2009, gave reasons for a refusal announced at the end of the hearing on 2 March.
The applicants were detained under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act 1930 in connection with an investigation into a robbery of a large sum of money from Bank of Ireland. Their initial 48-hour detention periods had been extended by senior Garda officers for a further 24 hours. A District Court judge could authorise another extension of up to 24 hours if the statutory conditions were met.
The central dispute was when the District Court applications began. A special sitting was convened on 1 March to consider extensions for seven detainees. After the first application took about two hours, the remaining detainees were brought from cells before the judge at about 9.15pm, and the applications were called. Their individual hearings, evidence and submissions followed separately. The applicants argued that their hearings began only when each individual case proceeded, after their detention periods had expired.
Justice Peart held that the applications began when the detainees were produced before the judge and the applications were brought to the court’s attention. He relied on the statutory requirement that the person concerned be produced before the judge, the circumstances of the special sitting and the judge’s handwritten time notes on the warrants. He concluded that the three applications began at the times noted, around 9.15pm, before the detention periods expired. Under the law then in force, a detention period that had not expired when the hearing began was deemed not to expire until the application was determined.
The applicants also argued that Garda witnesses had not been sworn separately for each application, and that the warrants did not record the precise time the judge made each determination. The judge accepted that the witnesses were sworn for the first case and gave evidence in later cases without taking a fresh oath. He found that the District Court treated them as already sworn and that this did not justify release. He expressly left open whether sworn evidence was required in such applications.
On the warrants, he found no evidence of a delay between the decisions and their signing, and considered it reasonable to infer that the warrants were signed immediately after the decisions. He held that this challenge did not show the detention was unlawful. The High Court concluded that all three applicants’ detention was lawful and refused the relief sought.