The High Court ruled that a man charged with drunken driving was lawfully detained when he provided a urine sample at Westport Garda Station in September 2015. The court answered a consultative case stated from the District Court in the affirmative, finding the delay for a doctor to attend reasonable in the circumstances.
The accused had been arrested after Garda Darren Conlon stopped his car at Mill Street, Westport, on 27 September 2015. The judgment records that a preliminary breath test registered “fail”. At the station, the garda promptly contacted Westdoc, the out-of-hours medical service, to request a doctor to take a blood or urine sample.
The doctor was delayed while attending a medical emergency. He arrived at 1.30pm, two hours after the accused reached the station. The accused chose to provide urine, and the doctor took the sample at 1.35pm. The accused was then released without charge pending analysis. A later certificate recorded an alcohol concentration of 155mg per 100ml of urine, more than twice the legal limit. He was subsequently charged.
At the District Court hearing, the defence challenged the detention because of the delay. Garda Conlon could not explain precisely why the doctor took so long to arrive. He accepted that he had not contacted Westdoc between 11.45am and 1.05pm, sought another medical practitioner, or considered taking the accused to Castlebar Garda Station for an evidential breath test. The defence argued that the prosecution had not justified the delay or pursued available alternatives. The prosecution said the doctor’s emergency explained the delay and that the garda had acted reasonably.
The District Judge referred the legal question to the High Court because she was concerned about the delay and whether it had been adequately justified. The High Court considered the established rule that detention must last no longer than is reasonably necessary to complete its lawful purpose. It distinguished a delay caused by waiting for a doctor from an unjustified pause before starting the sample process.
The court found that the sample process began immediately when the garda contacted Westdoc. It accepted the explanation that the doctor was attending an emergency and considered it reasonable to use the out-of-hours service on a Sunday shortly before lunchtime. The court said the test was whether the delay was reasonable in all the circumstances; the prosecution was not required to prove the nature or location of the emergency. The garda’s failure to take every possible alternative step did not, by itself, make the detention unlawful.
The judgment noted that three hours is the maximum period for detention for the purpose of obtaining a sample, but that being within that limit does not automatically make detention lawful. The court’s ruling was confined to the circumstances of this case: it answered the stated question that the accused was lawfully detained when required to provide the urine specimen.