27 drug drivers banned in single day

€10K in fines in a single sitting at Cavan District Court

More than two dozen drug drivers were put off the road when their cases were finally concluded at Cavan District Court last week.

It followed a failed bid by legal reps to have the cases struck out based on a Surpreme Court challenge to the requirement for drivers to wait at checkpoints pending a roadside drug test.

While similar drug driving accused were dealt with in previous weeks, and others will appear in later lists, the lion’s share of the Cavan cases were adjourned en masse to a sitting of Cavan District Court on Thursday, April 26.

In respect of all convicted, Judge Raymond Finnegan imposed mandatory one-year driving bans, along with a fine of €350, which when totalled, came to almost €10,000 for the exchequer at a single sitting.

Some of the accused, depending on their prior records, were granted postponements of several months, but still face a period off the road and, following that, resitting their tests.

The majority of people convicted last week were found with a concentration of cannabis in their blood.

They included drivers from across the country - Cavan, Longford, Leitrim, Offaly, Cork - and detected on major routes and local roads.

The earliest case dates back to 2019, and the defendants were all male with ages ranging from their early 20s to their fifties.

Close to half a dozen more cases involving drug drivers were adjourned to later court sittings.

Last December Justice Iseult O’Malley of the Supreme Court determined that amendments introduced by Section 13 of the Road Traffic Act 2024 still required drivers to wait at checkpoints whilst awaiting the outcome of a roadside oral fluid test to check for the presence of drugs.

The Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) appealed what became known as the O’Flaherty ruling in the High Court, which found the Road Traffic Act 2010 did not give gardaí statutory powers to hold drivers at the scene until the drug-testing apparatus completed its analysis.

The effect of the earlier HC ruling was that a person could leave the scene of checkpoint before gardaí had a test result, which could take up to an hour.

The change to the law now sets a maximum amount of time for holding a person at the scene.