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[Article] Drink-drive intoxilyser not fair to suspects, court told

  • 20-05-2004 7:05pm
    #1
    Victor
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 78,647 ✭✭✭✭


    http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/3231227?view=Eircomnet
    Drink-drive intoxilyser not fair to suspects, court told
    From:The Irish Independent
    Thursday, 20th May, 2004

    THE use of the intoxilyser to breath test drivers was challenged in the High Court yesterday.

    The challenge was brought on constitutional grounds in which it was claimed that a person tested would be unable to rebut the eventual result.

    Taking the proceedings are two publicans, Oliver Quinlan, Rathdown Villas, Terenure, Dublin and John Purcell, Grange Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin and Ashley McGonnell, a mechanic, of Glasslough, Co Monaghan.

    All three were required by gardai to provide two specimens of breath by exhaling into an apparatus known as a Lion Intoxilyser, on separate occasions.

    Mr Justice Liam McKechnie was told by Feichin McDonagh SC, for the DPP and Attorney General, that the three plaintiffs were drawn from a possible 80 challenges to the relevant Road Traffic Act.

    Gerard Hogan SC, for the applicants, said the legal requirements meant that the discretion as to the nature of the testing lay entirely with the arresting garda and whether the person arrested would be subject to a breath test or a blood or urine test.

    An arrested motorist would be brought to a Garda station and into a room containing the intoxilyser apparatus. The motorist was required to give two blows for breath specimens within a three-minute period. The lowest of the two breath specimens was the one that would be treated as final.

    Mr Hogan argued that unlike the blood and urine test there was no "split" sample in the case of the intoxilyser. Blood and urine samples were divided into two parts. One sample was offered to the person involved in a sealed container.

    He had no difficulty with the idea of the breath test itself but claimed the machines were not infallible.

    There were areas where a measurement could go wrong and this was acknowledged by the manufacturers. There had to be some form of safeguard. He instanced countries where they had the right to elect for an independent blood or urine test.

    Unless some safeguard was provided, an accused would have no effective method to challenge the results. Without the possibility of independent testing, how could an accused rebut that test, asked counsel.

    The hearing continues today.


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