Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the publication of the Bill. My colleagues on this side of the House and I have been seeking it for a long time and I have had a hang-up about the fact that this was not before the House long ago.

I will never forget the situation of a young man who desperately wanted to pay his fines but they had approached the £1,700 mark. That is many years ago and it was a lot of money then. He had not been a good boy, otherwise he would not have had the fines. He tried to have part payment accepted but it could not be. He went away to England but did not like it there. When he returned his sister got him into a good job. He was quickly brought before the local credit union, which endorsed a £2,000 loan on the Friday night. On the Friday morning gardaí took him from his house and left him in Mountjoy. No excuses were taken. He was not there very long before they found out there was no place for him. He was given a £20 note to get himself back home, he was in Three Mile House before the gardaí were back home and no £1,700 had to be paid. It was the worst thing that ever happened to him in some ways. Had the fines been attached to his income or taken on a quarterly basis he would have seen the difficulties of it and understood that if one does wrong one has to pay for it. What happened solved no problem and did not help in the future. There is no justification for that type of thing.

I could outline several other hardship cases. As anybody who is long enough about this House knows, many years ago if there was what appeared to be an unjust fine one could go to the Minister for Justice and have some easing of that. We all know that changed dramatically when the case was taken against the then Minister in Galway. There is no means of easing a fine now. I have come across some horrible cases where people genuinely could not afford to pay the fines imposed on them and they were in grave difficulty. When one considers that 276 debt defaulters finished up in jail last year and it costs €2,000 each per week to keep them there, one realises we have to move from that system.

The Bill provides for payment of fines by instalments, gives the courts the powers to impose a community service order for non-payment of fines and provides improved means of assessing the capacity of persons to pay a fine to achieve equality of impact. This is important. The previous speaker mentioned a case in my home town on Monaghan which is going before the courts and could have implications for how money is paid to institutions in future. It is important that people realise when they borrow money they must pay it back by whatever means and if it can be done by instalments in a reasonable fashion that is better than sending them to prison.

Fine Gael has been pushing this issue for a long time. We produced a number of Bills, from the 1998 one with the former Deputy Jim Higgins, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe in 2004, then Senator Brian Hayes in the Seanad in 2004, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe also introduced another Bill, the Fines Bill 2004 and we sponsored the Enforcement of Court Orders Bill in 2006. That is going back over a long period of time. With the exception of the one in the Seanad, I was present for every discussion and on each occasion we were promised when there was a vote against us that it was only a matter of weeks or months before a proper Bill would be brought in.

It is interesting that this Bill contains the majority of the provisions proposed in the previous Fine Gael Bills. We were not far wrong. We were the Opposition party and did not have all the expertise the Government had. It would not have been difficult for the Government to have accepted of those Bills and moved it forward, but it was not done because funds were available to keep people in jail and the cost did not matter. We had gardaí going around the country trying to collect fines when their time could have been used to much better effect. This Bill should be put through the system quickly and we should ensure the gardaí are doing the jobs they are trained to do and are not out there as debt collectors. We should also ensure the jails are used for the people who should be there, and they should not be released early. This is the importance of this Bill.

From my involvement here in Dáil Éireann I am glad to see the Bill move forward. However, we must seriously examine the way we conduct our business. Why, for party political reasons, do we turn down these issues just for the sake of turning them down? We have avoided dealing with this issue since 1998. It was seen as necessary then by people on this side of the House and it took 11 years to bring it forward. It reminds me of a situation with carers. When I sought the half-rate carer's allowance 12 years ago we were told it was illegal. Three years ago, coming up to an election, it was brought in and has proved to be a valuable asset for those who are eligible for it.

To be relevant to the country, whether in Government or in Opposition, we should not play opposition just for the sake of it. If somebody has a good idea we should go forward with it. The record will clearly show that Fine Gael over the past number of years has had a good, worthwhile idea, tried to use its Private Members' time in a positive way, but was ignored. Now the times are more difficult and people realise we must get better value for money, and this Bill is introduced. This Bill will give better value for money and will avoid putting people in prison unnecessarily.

I do not know if there is a provision dealing with attachment of fines in the Bill. I do not have time to read the Bill and I apologise for that. It is important that fines could be attached to a job, if the person is lucky enough to have one, or to social welfare to avoid arrears in paying the fine. We brought forward that proposal in a Bill and I see no reason it cannot be included in this one. I urge the Minister to deal with that. It may require another piece of legislation but it is important that people are able to pay their fines by sums or attachment.

I welcome the proposal. I will leave it to my colleague, Deputy Charles Flanagan, to tease out the changes that may be needed in it. That is his role as our party's spokesperson. I am sure this can be addressed and I hope if there are items he considers need to be changed that his logic will be accepted and the Bill will be passed as quickly as possible.

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