State must make reasonable efforts to assign bilingual judge when accused has chosen to present his case in Irish

Judicial review – Irish language rights - interaction between Irish language rights and the conduct of a summary criminal trial in the District Court - whether the State has a duty of any kind under Article 8 of the Constitution to provide a bilingual District Judge in circumstances where an accused person has chosen to exercise his (now well-established) constitutional right to present his side of the case in the Irish language - scope of that duty - State does have a duty either to make reasonable efforts to assign a bilingual District Judge or to assign such a Judge as far as is reasonably practicable - identification of a constitutional basis for this duty is novel - relationship between the constitutional status of the Irish language and the lived reality of the language – a language right argument, not a due process argument - it has been common practice to assign a bilingual District Judge in cases to be wholly or partly heard in Irish - logistics of interpreting in a bilingual trial - linguistic effects of translating from one language to another - status of the Irish Language under the Constitution - legal principles concerning the use of the Irish language previously placed beyond doubt by decisions of the courts – relevant caselaw - issue arising in the present case has not previously been definitively decided – wrongly assumed in many cases that if the State appoints an interpreter, this satisfies or exhausts any constitutional obligations placed upon the State by Article 8 - must be some duty on the part of the State to make at least some effort to assign a bilingual judge – refuse the application for a bilingual District Judge simply because the applicant spoke English, as happened in the present case, appears to me to run contrary to the whole spirit of Article 8 together with the jurisprudence on it - necessary to decide on the precise standard but it can be said that it is no lower than a duty to assign a bilingual judge so far as is practicable or to make reasonable efforts to assign a bilingual judge where requested by an accused who wishes to conduct his side of the case in Irish - declaration that the Minister has a duty to make reasonable efforts to assign a bilingual (Irish-English) District Judge for the forthcoming criminal trial of the applicant in the District Court - practical consequences – judicial review granted