The High Court has cleared the way for the hearing of a prosecution against a father for public order offences allegedly arising out of an incident following a complaint to gardaí about his two-year-old child being left alone sleeping in his car while he went shopping.
The man was arrested in the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre, Dublin, following an altercation between him and gardaí, who had been informed about the child in the car on August 25th, 2019.
It was claimed that he left one of his sons, who was asleep at the time, in the parked car for a brief period while he made a purchase at a shopping centre.
He was charged with threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour in a public place, failure to comply with a garda direction and refusal to give his name and address.
He denied those charges and sought to bring his own private prosecution against the gardaí over what he said were three wrongful prosecutions from the incident.
The private prosecution application was refused by the District Court and ultimately the Court of Appeal dismissed a challenge to that refusal.
Before the public order case went ahead in Blanchardstown District Court, the man brought separate High Court proceedings over a refusal by the district judge to give him a separate preliminary hearing to address his request for further disclosure by the prosecuting authorities.
He wanted video and audio recordings from the shopping centre and Garda station, together with any recording from a garda recording device. The DPP said disclosure obligations had been complied with.
In a judgment, the High Court’s Judge Garrett Simons refused his application for a separate preliminary hearing before his criminal trial.
There was no fixed rule which dictated that there must always be a separate preliminary hearing in advance of a criminal trial in the District Court, still less that such a hearing must take place at least four weeks before trial, the judge said.
The decision on disclosure, and the identification of any procedural measures necessary to secure a fair trial, were matters for the District Court in the first instance, Simons said.
The judge said the man remains at liberty to seek additional disclosure when the proceedings next come before the District Court.
A reporting restriction on naming the man to protect his children will remain in force unless and until varied by further order, the judge said.
However, a party to the proceedings, or any bona fide member of the media, may apply to vary the order on seven days’ notice to the man, Simons said.