Ms Kate Mulkerrins:

Again, the Covid experience is hugely relevant here. The vast majority of the population abide by rules of law not because of the penal provisions that prevail. Non-paid fines, in and of themselves, create a whole series of unintended consequences for the criminal justice system. We see that in the unpaid Covid fines that led to vast numbers of summonses. The problem here is that we do not know whether we are going to be dealing with significant numbers of protestors or a small number of recidivists. If it is a small number of recidivists and there is a moral objection to paying that fine then that leads to further serious implications for those individuals. So one could say that a fine is a useful tool of escalation to deter initially and only the most determined recidivists will not pay and face penal consequences.

As a career criminal lawyer and a prosecutor for ten of those years my experience is that it is not the penalty itself but the social opprobrium heaped upon the offence in question that counts. I give the example of drink driving, which we had tolerance for in every jurisdiction until there was a mindset change. Reinforcing that, the most significant part of that penalty was in fact the loss of the licence not the fine, in my view. So in and of itself, the final penalty is less important to An Garda Síochána than the tools to deal with the incident at the crisis point, which is where the harm is done. Diminishing that harm immediately requires, as has been said, a suite of tools to allow for proper investigation of the matter, which may then mean proper investigation, a search facility and an arrest circumstance at a lower stage of acceleration. Whether it is a fine or a penalty more significant is, I think, of less concern. I hope that I have articulated the position of An Garda Síochána,