Attempts to pay motoring fine ‘frustrated by bureaucracy’

The garda responsible for processing speeding offences detected by GoSafe vans has been summoned to appear before a Cork judge to explain why a retired teacher’s attempts to pay his fine has been “frustrated by bureaucracy”.

Macroom District Court yesterday heard that Timothy Doherty’s first attempt to pay a €80 fine for speeding on the N22 Cork-Killarney road at Crookstown on November 16th, 2013, was rejected because he did not include his middle name when signing the form, as it appeared on his licence.

Mr Doherty (63) told Judge James McNulty that he was then fined €120 for failing to pay his original penalty on time. He returned the form with his first cheque for €80 and a second for €40 to cover the €120 fine.

Mr Doherty then received a court summons and was told that his second attempt to pay could not be processed as two cheques could not be accepted as payment for the one fine.

Mr Doherty, Inis Céin, Cork, who was detected by a GoSafe van driving at 109 km/h in a 100km/h zone, said that he was “embarrassed” to be before the court given his attempts to pay the fine.

Speeding offences detected by the private GoSafe operator are prosecuted in the name of Garda Insp John McDonald, who heads up the Garda’s fixed charge processing unit in Thurles.

Judge McNulty ordered gardaí to instruct Insp McDonald to appear to explain what law precluded Mr Doherty from using his own ordinary name when signing documents, and to outline to the court what law precluded those from processing the payments from accepting two cheques for the one fine.

The matter was adjourned to July 16th to allow Insp McDonald to attend court.