Fears by the State that it might have to abandon hundreds of drink-driving prosecutions abated yesterday following a Supreme Court ruling.
The Director of Public Prosecutions won his appeal against a High Court finding that Garda procedures for taking blood samples from persons suspected of drink-driving were not reliable because the bottles used were not sealed and therefore not tamperproof.
If the High Court decision had stood, drink-driving charges against many defendants which were put back to await the outcome of the Supreme Court case were expected to be thrown out.
The dispute originally went before the High Court as a case stated from a district judge who asked for the court's opinion on an issue relating to the sealing of blood samples arising from a particular case of alleged drink driving. In that case, the judge found there was a breach of Section 18 (1) of the Road Traffic Act 1994 because the blood specimen was placed in unsealed glass bottles which in turn were placed in a container which was then sealed.
Giving the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court on the DPP's appeal against the High Court's conclusions, Mr Justice Barrington said it could not say that the answer given by the High Court judge to the question posed to him was wrong. The problem was rather that the question posed in the case did not raise the real issue.
However, the Supreme Court had been able to grasp the real issue from the facts set out in the case stated and, in the event, it had adopted the interpretation of Section 18 (1) put forward by a Garda inspector in the case.
It was the Supreme Court's view that Section 18 (1) requires a designated doctor first to divide specimens of blood into two parts and permits the use of glass bottles for the division. Secondly, the legislation required that each divided blood part should be placed separately in a container which was immediately sealed.
The legislation did not require that the glass bottles used for dividing the blood specimen should themselves be sealed but merely required that each part of the specimen in any such bottle should be placed in a sealed container.
In the case before the court, the specimen taken was divided by the doctor into two parts. One was given to the defendant and the other was sent to the Medical Bureau of Road Safety.
A garda had stated a doctor had divided the blood sample into two parts, placing each part into separate glass bottles. The garda said the glass bottles were not sealed but secured only by means of a screw cap.
The garda stated that the glass bottles could not be sealed, except that on occasion a doctor could put masking tape around the lid, although that did not happen in the present case.
A person could, if they had access to the bottle, open it, remove and replace the contents and put the lid back on the bottle without anyone knowing this had been done, the garda agreed.
The garda had stated that, after the screw cap had been applied to the bottle, it was placed in a cylindrical cardboard container which was then sealed and posted to the bureau.
At that stage in the evidence, a glass bottle, its screw cap and a cylindrical container were produced in the District Court so that the district judge could inspect them. The garda confirmed that the bottle, screw cap and container were in all material respects identical with those used on the occasion in question.
Having inspected the bottle and screw cap, the district judge concluded that screwing the cap on to the bottle would not in fact seal it.
The district judge reached the conclusion that the requirements of section 18 (1) had not been complied with for the reason that the container which was required under law to be sealed was that holding the specimen and not some other container. However, as he considered the point raised to be an important one, he agreed to state a case for the determination of the High Court which upheld his decision. The DPP appealed that High Court ruling to the Supreme Court.
The case which raised the point of law was that of Mr Tate Croom-Carroll, of Dromona House, Dundrum, Co Tipperary, who was yesterday awarded his costs by the Supreme Court.
Mr Croom-Carroll's case will now return to Cashel District Court where the district judge will have to consider another finding of the Supreme Court that the container in the case was not correctly labelled.