The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is seeking to overturn a District Court judge’s “unreasonable and irrational” refusal to convict more than 30 drivers of alleged speeding on a road in Co Kildare.
At Laois District Court last December, Judge Andrew Cody refused to convict the drivers after claiming GoSafe’s speed detector vans had “deliberately targeted an unjust speed zone” on the road at Clogheen, Monastervin, with “rich pickings” and were “shooting fish in a barrel”.
Clogheen is in Co Kildare, but comes under Laois’s District Court area.
At the High Court on Monday, David Staunton, for the DPP, secured leave from Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty to bring a judicial review challenge aimed at overturning Judge Cody’s decision. A hearing date will be fixed later.
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In her proceedings, the DPP maintains Judge Cody was obliged to convict the drivers as the facts of the charges against them had been proven.
The statutory scheme of mandatory penalties following a conviction for certain road traffic offences removes the discretion of a District Court judge, once the facts are proven, to do anything other but convict and impose a penalty, it is argued.
While the judge had discretion about the amount of fine imposed, he had no discretion about the drivers each having five penalty points endorsed on their licences, the DPP said.
Judge Cody, in refusing to convict and impose a penalty as required by law in the relevant cases, exceeded his jurisdiction and acted in excess of his powers, it is argued.
The district judge also breached fair procedures by failing to properly, or at all, to have regard to the actual evidence in the case, it is also argued.
It was clear his remarks were “reflective of his own views generally” about speeding at the particular location and reflective of a view, notwithstanding a criminal offence was committed, there should be no conviction.
He was not entitled to take into account “irrelevant considerations” including endorsing views of a Kildare County Council engineer about the appropriate speed limit for the road, which was different from the actual limit, it is argued.
The refusal decision was “unreasonable, irrational, illogical, without basis in fact, contradictory and inconsistent with the evidence” to such an extent it should be quashed, it is further argued. The effect was “to fetter” the DPP’s statutory discretion to bring and maintain prosecutions.
In a written decision last December, Judge Cody said he had been “very concerned” for some two years about “excessive” prosecutions by GoSafe for exceeding the 60km/h hour speed limit in Clogheen covering 700m of the R445.
The road is about 12 metres wide with a large margin at each side, he said.
Total fines for Clogheen, representing 0.003 per cent of the road network, were €108,240 in 2022 when fines for the rest of the District Court area, the entire county of Laois, were €53,320, he said. The number of prosecutions for Clogheen was similar to those for counties Kilkenny, Louth and Mayo.
Local authorities may set speed limits which depart from the default national standards, he said. The Clogheen road was “exactly” the type of wide two-lane road where the speed limit, in line with Department of Transport guidelines, should be 100km/h.
The setting of any speed limit was “entirely” a matter for Kildare County Council, but he was asking it to review the Clogheen limit “as a matter of urgency”.
Motorists were convicted over the past two years of travelling in the Clogheen zone at speeds “as low as 67km/h”.
While the Clogheen townland having historically been the location of fatalities should be among factors taken into account, he believed, in determining location of speed checks, the “huge number” of prosecutions for the 60km/h Clogheen zone “has absolutely nothing to do with criminality and little to do with road safety and are driven not by safety but by targets, statistics and finance”.
His conclusion was that GoSafe – contracted by An Garda Síochána in conjunction with the Department of Justice to provide and operate speed cameras – “deliberately targeted” an “unjust” speed zone in Clogheen with “rich pickings” and were “shooting fish in a barrel”.
