An application by Zoe Developments Ltd to have its forthcoming Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial for alleged safety breaches abandoned or adjourned has been rejected by Judge Kieran O'Connor.
The trial is due to begin on December 8th and will be the first criminal trial in the State under the Safety, Health and Welfare Act 1981.
Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley SC submitted that as a result of the most adverse publicity imaginable from what he called "media saturation" arising out of the death of a worker on a Zoe site and High Court proceedings, the company had no prospect whatever of getting a fair trial. Mr Vaughan Buckley's submission included quotations from a 160-page dossier of cuttings from Irish and foreign newspapers and transcripts of radio and television coverage from November 6th to November 26th.
Mr Vaughan Buckley said the publicity began when the Health and Safety Authority issued a press release on November 6th, prior to recent High Court proceedings.
This detailed that a worker had been killed on a Zoe building site in Dublin earlier that week and that the authority had stopped all work on the site. The release said the site would remain closed until the HSA was persuaded by Zoe it could be managed safely. The release further noted that Zoe had 12 previous convictions and faced two pending criminal trials on safety grounds.
He said the publicity "got worse" even before the High Court proceedings began on November 10th last. Mr Justice Kelly in the High Court described Zoe as "a recidivist criminal".
Mr Vaughan Buckley continued his submission with quotations from judgments of the superior courts in the D case, concerning a Donegal man charged with a sex assault, the Z case, which arose from the X abortion case, and the Eamonn Kelly £500,000 cocaine case, where a retrial was ordered due to two newspaper articles during the first trial.
He said the Zoe case was completely different to the others because the public was told as a result of the HSA press release that the company had 12 previous convictions. Nobody could get a fair trial if the jury knows it has 12 previous convictions.
Prosecuting counsel, Mr Fergal Foley BL, said the State was totally opposed to the defence application. The prosecution was ready to proceed. The case had been listed first last April for arraignment and the trial date set in May.
Judge O'Connor said the company had been subjected to very strong criticism by a learned High Court judge who accused it of making profit on the blood of its workers.
While there was "great force" in Mr Vaughan Buckley's "most cogent application", he had no option on how to deal with the matter. The law was clear and concise through Supreme and High Court decisions over a number of years about cases in which there was pre-trial publicity. Judge O'Connor said both the courts had ruled that in such instances the trial judge should direct a jury to ignore media reports or speculation and try the case on the facts presented as evidence.