The Supreme Court has ruled that a man does not have the right to a trial by a bi-lingual jury. Peadar Ó'Maicín from Rosmuc in Co. Galway is charged with assault causing harm in Lettermore in 2008.

He wants his case run before a jury that can understand Irish and English without requiring an interpreter. He is from Connemara and resides close to a Gaeltacht area.

His High Court challenge for a bilingual jury failed and he has now lost by four to one on appeal to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Justice Adrian Hardiman, who dissented, states that he does "not believe there is any other country in the world in which a citizen would not be entitled to conduct his business before a court in the national and first official language, and to be understood directly by such court in that language".

While he would grant the appeal, he states that he "would at the present time grant no relief other than a declaration".

That would state that Mr. Ó'Maicín is 'entitled to be tried before a jury who will understand evidence given in Irish directly and without the assistance of an interpreter'.

He includes as an Appendix to his judgment a case study in legal bi-lingualism in Canada - which notes that 'regardless of the linguistic demographics of a province, when a trial is to be held, the accused person is entitled to a trial through either of the official languages of Canada, i.e. English or French'.

Dismissing the appeal, Mr. Justice Frank Clarke expressed concerns that a bi-lingual jury might exclude 'quite a significant number of persons, otherwise qualified, from the entitlement to sit on the jury in question'.

Mr. Justice John McMenamin notes it is not "Constitutionally permissible for any person, in any part of the country, to seek to have a jury panel devised or 'tailored' for them".

He finds that the issues raised are of 'great importance' and that it must be 'cause for regret' that the defence in this case 'necessarily relied on the fact that the national language is not the vernacular language of all the people'.