O'Neill v Director of Public Prosecutions & Ors (Approved)

             These judicial review proceedings seek to set aside a conviction entered by the District Court. �The Applicant has been convicted of the offence of holding a mobile phone while driving.� One of the principal issues for determination in this judgment is whether the conduct of the criminal trial before the District Court was such that the Applicant received an unfair hearing which cannot be corrected by way of an appeal to the Circuit Court.

             Judicial review is concerned principally with the legality of the decision-making process, and not with the underlying merits of the decision under challenge (save in cases of irrationality).� Put otherwise, the function which the High Court exercises in determining judicial review proceedings is far more limited than that which the Circuit Court and the Court of Appeal, respectively, would exercise in determining an appeal against conviction and sentence.

             The inherent limitations on the High Court's judicial review jurisdiction have been described, in more eloquent terms, by the Supreme Court ( per Charleton J.) in E.R. v. Director of Public Prosecutions [2019] IESC 86 as follows (at paragraph 17) :

             The Supreme Court judgment goes on, in the next paragraph, to emphasise that an applicant for judicial review in criminal proceedings has the " substantial burden " of showing the deprivation of a right.� It is not enough to ground a successful application for judicial review that the trial judge might have made an error of fact, nor even an incorrect decision of law.

             The circumstances in which judicial review may be appropriate, notwithstanding the availability of a right of appeal, have been summarised as follows by Clarke J. (as he then was) in Sweeney v. District Judge Fahy [2014] IESC 50 (at paragraphs 3.14 and 3.15):