Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I wish to thank all Deputies who spoke and ensured a positive and interesting debate on the fines system in this country.

The Minister of State, Deputy Moloney, explained in his opening speech that the system of indexing proposed in the Bill might appear, on the face of it, quite complex. However, I suggest that although several tables of figures might seem intimidating at first the scheme of indexation proposed in the Bill is not too difficult to understand. It is the system recommended in two reports by the Law Reform Commission. There is no realistic alternative scheme. We do not want to end up with a scheme under which a wealthy person might be fined several thousand euro for throwing a cigarette butt on the pavement, for example. Even if one believes that someone who has that sort of money could afford to pay a huge amount and deserves to pay it, there would be two insurmountable obstacles in the way. First, the courts would never accept that such a fine was proportionate to the offence committed. Second, as was explained earlier, the District Court is a court of summary jurisdiction and there must be an upper limit to the amount of fine such a court of limited jurisdiction could impose. Therefore, not only is there no realistic alternative, there simply is no alternative.

Deputies Flanagan and Sherlock raised the question of persons being imprisoned for non-payment of fines. Of course nobody wishes to see persons imprisoned for non-payment of a fine and the Bill should greatly reduce the numbers imprisoned due to the equality of impact and payment by instalments provisions as well as the proposals aimed at providing the courts with alternatives to imprisonment. The size of any fine imposed by the courts will be directly related to the impact of the fine on the convicted person and his or her dependants. However, there are persons who can afford to pay but will not. They ignore all opportunities and wilfully refuse to pay their fines. We would be foolish to abolish all possibility of imprisonment in such cases.

There seems to be an impression that the prisons are full of persons incarcerated for non-payment of fines. This is not true. As the Minister of State, Deputy Moloney, said in his opening speech, a survey taken at random on two days showed a total of six persons in prison solely on foot of committal warrants ordering their imprisonment in lieu of non-payment of a fine. On another day a total of 11 persons were in custody for non-payment of a fine. It is fair to assume that on any given day the number of persons in prison for non-payment of a fine is in single figures.

A total of just over 1500 persons were imprisoned in 2007 solely for non-payment of fines.

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