Ruling holds up 1,400 drink-drive prosecutions

Lawyers for the State have told the Court of Appeal that 1,400 drink-driving prosecutions are being held up by a ruling that breathalyser test statments were not valid if printed in the English language only.

The DPP opened an appeal yesterday against a ruling which found that a failure to produce the other half of a statement showing breath-alcohol levels — in Irish —was not evidence at all.

Counsel for the DPP, Diarmaid McGuinness, told the three-judge court that the case had its roots in a road traffic prosecution of Mihai Avadenei, 29, with an address in Swords, Co Dublin.