The Director of Public Prosecutions has won a High Court order overturning decisions of the District Court which had stopped the trials of seven people on drink-driving charges.
The trials of the seven on drink-driving charges between 2000 and 2002 were adjourned on many occasions at their request to await the outcome of challenges by others to intoxilyser legislation.
The Supreme Court in July 2006 dismissed the intoxilyser challenges but deferred giving its reasons until November 2006.
In June 2006, Judge Constantine O'Leary halted the trial of one of the seven on grounds of delay in prosecuting him.
He indicated he would do the same in the other cases where the alleged offences were committed more than four years previously unless there was a "special factor", which was not specified, against doing so.
The DPP brought a High Court challenge to the decision of the district judge, alleging lack of fairness in how he dealt with the cases.
The DPP complained that the judge had failed to hold an inquiry into the reason for the delay in prosecuting the seven and had dismissed the cases without hearing evidence.
In his reserved judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Roderick Murphy allowed the challenge and cleared the way for the trials of the seven.
Mr Justice Murphy said he believed the lapse of time awaiting the High and Supreme Court decisions on the intoxilyser challenge could not be equated to blameworthy prosecutorial delay.
He found Judge O'Leary had erred in law and exceeded his jurisdiction on how he dealt with the cases.
The judge had failed to consider whether each of the accused had established blameworthy prosecutorial delay but rather proceeded on the basis that, where there was an inordinate lapse of time, he should carry out a balancing test as to whether the right to a speedy trial was breached by that lapse.
Mr Justice Murphy said it was not "blameworthy" for the prosecution to have accepted District Court rulings adjourning the cases.
Where the accused were not asserting their right to a speedy trial and when the prosecution was at all material times ready to proceed, it could hardly be said to be blameworthy to have agreed to adjournments which facilitated the accused or the court, he said.
It seemed, the judge added, that the primary reason for not getting the cases on was because the accused persons were "perfectly happy" to allow their prosecutions to be postponed for a number of years.
He said they had hoped to take advantage of a finding that the legislation under which they were being prosecuted was unconstitutional.
However, the High Court and the Supreme Court instead found that the legislation was constitutional.
It was of "signal importance" that the three people who had challenged the intoxilyser laws were themselves all subject to trials taking place after they lost their cases, Mr Justice Murphy said.
It would be "curious", he added, if those three were required to stand trial while the seven accused here were to have their cases dismissed on grounds of "delay".