Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputies for their support in principle for this proposal. We are not obliging the Courts Service to publish this information. This is a new system for recoupment of fines so we must wait and see how it operates. The Courts Service is entirely computerised now so it is well able to get all the information. I suspect that rather than publishing it in Iris Oifigiúil at some expense it will place it on the Internet, where it will be easily accessible. It may do this periodically or on a rolling basis; I do not know. The finer details will be left up to the Courts Service. However, it should not be a major administrative burden.

This legislation is designed to focus on the hard core of people who purposely default on payment of fines. We are not trying to go after people who have difficulty repaying fines due to their particular circumstances. We must remember that even before the fine is levied by the court, the court has an obligation to consider the person's capacity to pay.

Deputy Flanagan mentioned earlier the removal of ministerial discretion to reduce fines. I have sympathy with this point of view because I know from my constituency work what has happened as a result of that change. Let us say somebody forgets to go to court. As Deputy Flanagan said, if the person does not appear in court the judge normally applies the higher end of the scale when it comes to a fine. It used to be that the person could go to the local TD, a petition was opened and the fine might be reduced. Now the person cannot do this and he or she must instead go to the extreme expense of employing a solicitor, possibly even a barrister, to appeal the fine in the Circuit Court or the Court of Criminal Appeal.

People have come to me - I have no doubt other Members have had the same experience - with fines of €1,000 or €2,000 because they missed court appearances; they have faced a Hobson's choice of, in effect, throwing good money after bad by employing solicitors and appealing in the Circuit Court, with a risk that the fines may not be reduced or may even be increased. This has imposed significant burdens on people whom I will not call innocent but who are perhaps at the wrong end of the scale of offenders. In this legislation we are attempting to ensure such circumstances are considered and to be more humane by allowing payment by instalments and so on. People will also be able to repay their debts to society through community service orders where before they would have been sent to prison.

I thank Deputy Flanagan for accepting in principle the concept of attachment, which we will consider. If we find the system we establish does not work properly, we are considering - as an alternative at the other end of the scale to imprisonment - providing the option to an offender, even after receiving a community service order or the ultimate sanction of prison, of accepting a court order for attachment of his or her earnings or social welfare payments rather than going to prison. However, we can consider this another time.

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