{"id":647510,"date":"2026-10-07T13:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/647510\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T13:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:08:09","slug":"court-clears-way-for-hearing-following-row-sparked-by-complaint-about-child-alone-in-car-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/647510\/","title":{"rendered":"Court clears way for hearing following row sparked by complaint about child alone in car \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Court<\/a> 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 garda\u00ed<\/a> about his two-year-old child being left alone sleeping in his car while he went shopping.<\/p>\n

The man was arrested in the Liffey Valley<\/a> Shopping Centre, Dublin, following an altercation between him and garda\u00ed, who had been informed about the child in the car on August 25th, 2019. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

He denied those charges and sought to bring his own private prosecution against the garda\u00ed over what he said were three wrongful prosecutions from the incident. <\/p>\n

The private prosecution application was refused by the District Court<\/a> and ultimately the Court of Appeal<\/a> dismissed a challenge to that refusal.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In a judgment, the High Court\u2019s Judge Garrett Simons refused his application for a separate preliminary hearing before his criminal trial.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Dublin teen sent video of himself inhaling aerosols a year before he died from fumes, inquest hearsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The judge said the man remains at liberty to seek additional disclosure when the proceedings next come before the District Court. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

However, a party to the proceedings, or any bona fide member of the media, may apply to vary the order on seven days\u2019 notice to the man, Simons said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court has cleared the way for the hearing of a prosecution against a father for public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,72,10202,5721,73,61,60,43622],"class_list":["post-647510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-business","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-district-court","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liffey-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}