Hundreds of speed summonses struck out on technicality

DUBLIN'S LOCAL authorities are examining the process by which they create speed limits for roads in their area after 100 drivers had their speeding summonses struck out on a technicality.

It was the second day in a row that about 100 drivers who had been ordered to appear before Dublin District Court for speeding offences suddenly found their cases struck out.

The cases were dismissed because three local authorities in Dublin failed to publish speed limit changes in Iris Oifigiúil, the State journal.

Gardaí notified Judge Clare Leonard of the possible difficulties with a number of the summonses to be brought before her and sought an adjournment of the cases that were affected, but this was refused.

The speeding summonses which were struck out relate to an 80km/h limit on the M1 airport road between the Coolock interchange and the airport interchange, and a 60k/mh limit between the M50/N4 junction and Liffey Valley. It is not known if these are the only routes and limits on which a doubt now exists.

Iris Oifigiúil, dated November 14th, did contain a number of notices of speed changes from South Dublin County Council, but efforts yesterday to contact a spokesman for the authority were not successful.

A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said it would not comment until it had received the full text of the court decision.

She said, however, that the matter would be fully investigated.

Fingal County Council confirmed that its notice regarding the speed limit was not published in Iris Oifigiúil, but the council maintained that it was not required to publish the notice in the official journal.

In a statement the council said: "Fingal County Council is satisfied that we acted in compliance with the relevant legislation [Road Traffic Act 2004 and Local Government Act 2001] regarding the public notification of bylaws relating to speed limits.

"The requirement to publish a statutory notice relating to bylaws in Iris Oifigiúilis set out in the Statutory Instruments Act 1947.

"However, it should be noted that the Local Government Act 2001 states that failure to publish notification does not invalidate a bylaw. Neither does the Road Traffic Act 2004 specify Iris Oifigiúilas a required publication."

The council said that the notice had been published in both The Irish Timesand the Irish Independenton September 24th, 2007, and, notwithstanding the council's own views, arrangements were being made to publish the notice in Iris Oifigiúil in the near future.

North Dublin TD Tommy Broughan claimed that the number of speeding summonses affected might well be as high as 700.

Mr Broughan said this demonstrated the process of bringing about changes in a speed limit was "clearly overly bureaucratic and should be streamlined."

"The law should be changed to make it easier for councils to make sure that our roads are safer, and to ensure that speeding drivers are brought to justice," he said.