Hundreds of drink-driving cases in Donegal still in limbo despite Supreme Court ruling - Donegal Daily

Hundreds of drink-driving cases in Donegal remain unresolved despite a Supreme Court ruling seeming to have paved the way for their advancement,At a sitting of...

Hundreds of drink-driving cases in Donegal remain unresolved despite a Supreme Court ruling seeming to have paved the way for their advancement,

At a sitting of Letterkenny District Court this week, just shy of 300 such cases were adjourned.

The 298 matters had initially been put into that date by Judge Emile Daly in the hope that they could be dealt with.

However, due to the ongoing industrial action being taken by criminal legal aid solicitors, the cases had to be adjourned again.

Judge Daly has now set a date in late November for these matters. Judge Daly said that guilty pleas entered on the next date would be treated as “early pleas and will get the best possible discount”. Matters listed for hearings later the same week would not get the same benefit, Judge Daly added.

The Supreme Court recently overturned a High Court decision that had quashed a drink-driving conviction.

In the High Court, Ms Justice Sara Phelan had quashed the 2024 conviction of Andrejs Ratinskis in a case that centred on whether the Road Traffic Act, 2020’s statutory presumptions covered the blood sample in a period when it was being transferred between Newbridge Garda Station and the Medical Bureau of Road Safety.

The blood sample was posted and the evidence did not account for the storage of security at that time. Ms Justice Phelan found that the provisions did not provide for a presumption that the integrity of the sample remained intact. She found that the provisions didn’t cover ‘the chain of custody’ and deemed the certificate evidence as insufficient in proving how the sample was securely stored.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) appealed Ms Justice Phelan’s decision and the Supreme Court

Delivering the Supreme Court judgement, Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley, rejected the analysis given in the High Court.

Ms Justice O’Malley held that the physical blood specimen was not “evidence”, but rather the analysis certificate was what constituted evidence,

She said that a gap in evidence about custody could affect the reliability of evidence where an issue was raised, but it was not an automatic condition of admissibility.

Ms Justice O’Malley said that numbered seals and matching statutory forms are designed to safeguard the integrity of a sample and any tampering would be apparent.

Separately, at Letterkenny Circuit Court this week, over 300 cases - relating to a range of different alleged criminal charges and offences - had to be adjourned due to the strike action. However, talks between The Law Society and representatives from the Department of Justice are to be held over the next week in an attempt to end an impasse that has all but ground criminal courts to a halt.