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“I think that if the condition is to take medical treatment or to attenda particular facility
that has to be enforced. But I think every medical system will have its rate of
failures and I think that has to be understood as well. There are reasons, as I think
most of the doctors would confer, there are reasons why treatment fails, for
instance a failure to get the substance preciselycalibrated”. A8J1SC.
Both O’Malley (2000:291) and Osborough (1982:229) refer to the unfettered discretion of
the Irish courts to fashion conditions to suit the circumstances of the occasion. However,
once a court attaches a condition to a suspended sentence, whether mandatory or
prohibitory, unless the court exercises supervision of the sanction by way of reviews or by
engaging the offender under a probation-type bond, the non-fulfilment of such conditions
are generally unknown to the court unless a case is re-entered by the prosecution for
breach andactivation of sentence.
When interviewed on the issue of compliance with conditions of a suspended sentence, the
judges tended to divide into separate camps. The judges exercising summary jurisdiction
only were strongly of the view that non-compliance with conditions of a suspended
sentence did not of itself cause such cases to be re-entered for consideration of revocation.
The followingis a selection of their responses:
“…up to nowthe Guards never reactivated them…”A1J4DC
“…you may have wanted it to work, but it did not. The administrative side of it
didnot.” A1J5DC
“I haven’t the slightest doubt that they (prosecution) are not concerned about it;
that once a case has been dealt with even if a suspended sentence is imposed, that
the prosecution in the District Court in particular are not interested if the
Defendant was convicted somewhere else, to bring the case back. Whether it is
fair to say that they are not interested or not, or whether they simply do not have
the resources to find out and heretofore there has been no official or no provision
in either the Rules or otherwise as to how the matter can be brought back before
the court. I think that may be the reason for it, but certainly my experience has
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