A legal challenge by a prisoner to the Mountjoy prison authorities' refusal to allow him to vote will be heard by the High Court on Monday next. The prisoner wanted to vote in last month's three referendums.
Mr Justice O'Neill yesterday fixed the date for the hearing of a complaint by Patrick O'Doherty, who is serving a two-year sentence for tax fraud. He maintained that his constitutional rights had been violated by not allowing him to vote.
Mr Justice O'Neill yesterday remarked he thought the issue had been adjudicated on last week by the Supreme Court. This was a reference to the court's reversal of a High Court decision which granted another prisoner's legal challenge to the prison authorities' failure to facilitate him exercising his constitutional right to vote.
Mr Brian Cregan, for the State, said it would be contending that the Supreme Court had decided the matter. It was anxious to have the case heard as soon as possible.
O'Doherty said he acknowledged a similar matter had been before the Supreme Court which might, to the State, seem related. O'Doherty claims he was entitled to vote in referendums on the Nice Treaty, the abolition of the death penalty and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
O'Doherty (42), a company director from Ballingarry, Co Limerick pleaded guilty last October to making incorrect VAT returns, based on false invoices, some of which had been acquired illegally from another company, and obtaining money by false pretences between 1995 and 1996, amounting to £34,118.
Representing himself, O'Doherty claimed the decision to hold the referendums is constitutionally invalid as they were held in the absence of his right to vote.