THE reverberations of a question raised before a District Judge in Donegal last week look set to continue for some time, and far beyond the county.
A local solicitor, Mr Paudge Dorrian, said it was inappropriate that the District Court be held in a licensed premises - in this instance part of a hotel. On hearing there was no planning permission for the court to be held in the venue, Judge Thomas Fitzpatrick decided there was a question mark over the validity of the proceedings. He struck out the 250 summonses before him.
Since then the District Courts system has been thrown into disarray in the county and elsewhere. In a series of ministerial orders, the Department of Justice directed that all District Court proceedings in the county be held in proper courthouses, causing difficulties for gardai, witnesses and defendants, left trying to determine where they were required to appear, and raising the prospect of a backlog of cases developing in a small number of courthouses.
The Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, has made similar orders for other counties as hearings in community halls, hotel ballrooms and similar venues approached. About 100 of the 276 District Courts throughout the State are held in such venues, sometimes because the local courthouse is being refurbished, but often because no other venue has been provided for hearings which may take place only once a month.
Yesterday's advice from the Attorney General suggests he has taken the view that Judge Fitzpatrick need not have worried about the validity of his court in the Milford hotel. According to Mr Dermot Gleeson's advice, as relayed by the Department of Justice, the only non courtroom venues requiring planning permission are those first used for the purpose since new planning regulations came into effect in mid 1994. As the Milford venue had been used as a court for some years beforehand, it would appear excluded.
However, there is no reason to suppose that this view will be shared by all District Court judges throughout the State, and the Attorney General or the Director of Public Prosecutions is now expected to seek High Court orders to clarify the matter.
The key questions are over those non courthouse venues used as courtrooms since mid-1994, without planning permission having been secured by local authorities. If the estimates that there are up to a dozen such venues are accurate, this means the verdicts in several thousand cases may now be plausibly challenged, on the basis that the cases were not heard in proper courts. Any lawyer could take such a challenge to a higher court.
Could such a challenge succeed? "It seems to be an issue primarily of planning law, rather than something which goes to the root of whether justice was done in particular cases," according to Mr Ken Murphy, the director general of the Law Society, which represents solicitors.
A successful challenge would probably need to show that the rights of defendants could have been affected by the planning status of the District Court venue in which they were convicted.
Legal sources suggested that rather than agree to this contention which could cast doubt on thousands of verdicts, a judge ruling on the matter in a higher court might be expected to take the "more pragmatic view" that planning matters are separate from the dispensing of justice in fair proceedings.