The inquest into the death of Dwayne Foster who died in Garda custody heard yesterday that a postmortem showed he died of methadone intoxication.
Mr Foster (24), Woodbank Avenue, Finglas, Dublin, died on March 7th, 2006. He was the chief suspect in the fatal shooting of Donna Cleary at a party in Coolock in the early hours of March 5th, 2006.
She was shot by a gunman who had earlier been refused entry to the birthday party at Adare Green, Coolock, Dublin, along with a number of other men.
Dublin city coroner Dr Brian Farrell told an inquest into Mr Foster's death, which opened yesterday, that Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis, who performed the postmortem, had recorded the cause of death as methadone intoxication.
Solicitor for the Foster family Michael Finucane expressed concern at the time it was taking the DPP to come to a decision about the matter. This followed an application by Det Insp John McMahon yesterday to adjourn the inquest until March under section 25.1 of the Coroner's Act.
Det Insp McMahon told the court the file into Mr Foster's death, which includes some 150 statements, was with the DPP and he did not anticipate a decision in the near future. The file was sent to the DPP last June.
Mr Finucane objected."It does not take that length of time to read . . . You could read that file in nine days, not nine months. There is no explanation for why it is taking so long."
He asked the coroner to adjourn until January and inform the DPP that any "further adjournment will require explanation from his office". The coroner agreed to set a date in January but told Mr Finucane that, while he would endeavour to make his views known to the DPP, he had no jurisdiction to seek an explanation from the DPP.
Mr Finucane made a second submission to the coroner to have the full postmortem report released to the Foster family on the grounds that "information that was being denied them . . . seemingly is being disseminated to newspapers" by gardaí.
"Given the inordinate delay . . . I submit the family should be allowed read the postmortem in advance," said Mr Finucane.
Dr Farrell refused Mr Finucane's submission. "We do not release any information to any party while a matter is being adjudicated by the DPP."