Law reform body seeks new traffic fine rules

People with unpaid fines associated with road traffic offences would not be able to tax their cars or buy a new vehicle until the fine was cleared, under new rules recommended by the Law Reform Commission.

In its latest report, the commission recommends that a court should be able to direct the Department of Transport and the Department of the Environment not to retax a vehicle registered to someone who has defaulted on the payment of a fine, or register a change of vehicle ownership.

Having reviewed the matter, it decided against recommending that unpaid fines could be cleared by way of deductions at source from wages or social welfare payments. It said it was not recommending this measure “at this time”.

Addressing the huge number of unexecuted committal warrants that are at issue, the commission report said the bulk of these were for non-payment of fines, while the committal of persons to prison for the non-payment of fines was inefficient and costly.

In 2014, 8,965 people were sent to jail for not paying fines. In the bulk of the cases, they were processed into the prison system and then released without spending a night in jail. Because they had been committed, they no longer had to pay a fine.

A high number of cases that come before the District Courts are prosecutions that originated by way of a fixed charge notice for a road traffic offences, the report noted.

The Road Traffic Act 2010 provides for the payment of the charge upon the service of a summons, but the infrastructure has not yet been put in place to allow for this part of the law, so the section concerned has not yet been implemented. The commission recommends that it should be.

It also recommends that for minor offences, people should be able to plead guilty by post and not have to attend court for their case to be dealt with.

On the serving of summonses in criminal cases, the report noted that about 178,000 summonses were issued in 2011 and 2012 for unpaid fixed charge fines, that 48 per cent of these were served and that the rest were not, resulting in a potential revenue loss of approximately €7.4 million.

It noted the view of the Garda Inspectorate that the inefficient system of summons-serving affected Garda availability for more urgent policing duties.

The commission recommended that PPS numbers could be used as a unique identifier to assist in identifying a person on the Criminal Case Tracking System for the purpose of executing bench warrants.

The service should be able to share data with the Revenue Commissioners and the Minister for Social Protection for the purpose of directing a summons to an accurate address and guidelines should be drafted for the proper use of PPS numbers in accordance with data protection legislation.

It also recommended that a protocol be put in place requiring members of the Garda to inspect the Pulse data system to determine if a person is the subject of an outstanding bench warrant before releasing that person from Garda custody, and that the protocol include the Garda member signing a formal declaration that he or she had done so.