Penalty points cases clog the court system

Courts are becoming clogged with tens of thousands of penalty point offence cases because drivers are not paying their fines, it has emerged.

In a letter to the Department of Transport, the Courts Service has called for an urgent reform of legislation to deal with the problem before the introduction of privatised speed cameras exacerbates the backlog.

According to the Courts Service, the fixed penalty notice system was designed to keep such cases out of the courts, but is failing to do so. "There is an urgent need for reform of the current legislation which is failing to keep 'fixed penalty' offences out of court," it says.

In its letter, the Courts Service says "one of the objectives of penalty point notices was to keep fixed charge cases out of court.

"This is not working, and thousands of fixed charge cases are coming before the courts."

Gardaí have told the Courts Service that no more than 50 per cent to 60 per cent of drivers are paying their fines. The remainder of these are becoming summonses.

As a result, in the first six months of this year, some 88,000 summonses for fixed charge offences were listed in courts across the State, with a further 31,000 due to be sent to the courts by gardaí.

At the time of writing to the department, the Courts Service said there were a further 43,900 notices within the 56-day period, about 20,000 of which will become summonses.

The problem, according to the Courts Service, is what happens after the 56 days have elapsed with cases coming before the courts where there was no intention on the part of the defendant to defend it.

The Courts Service argues that the onus should be placed on the driver to indicate if he or she wishes to have the case dealt with by the courts, rather than the current situation, where a summons is always issued.

Fixed charge penalty notices were introduced for penalty point offences in April 2006.

They are issued to the registered owner of the vehicle in the case of cameras, and to the driver in all other cases.

They allow 56 days for the fine to be paid and penalty points incurred on the driver's licence. Once this period elapses, all unpaid fines automatically become summons applications.

Eugene Carey, a solicitor based in Mallow, Co Cork, said less than half of the drivers coming before the courts for fixed charge offences were convicted. "There is a complete fall-down in communication between the Garda Pulse system and the agency to which the gardaí have sub-contracted out this work," he said.

"Detections are up, there's no doubt about that, but the system is falling down," he said.

"Drivers are increasingly choosing to come into court because there is a growing awareness that there are so many hurdles to secure a conviction that it is worth the chance," he said.

The Courts Service has put forward a number of suggestions to improve the system.

Rather than an unpaid fine becoming a summons, the Courts Service said outstanding fines should be collected as part of the next car tax renewal, as is the case in some other jurisdictions.

Another suggestion was that unpaid fines should be handed over to a private debt collection agency and that an unpaid fine would incur higher penalty points.

Another failing in the current system is that it is inefficient when it comes to collecting penalty point data.

The Courts Service said defendants are asked to bring their driving licence to court so that the licence number can be recorded, and the points issued to the right driver.

"If a defendant does not hand up the licence, the licence number may not be captured."