John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this Bill, which I support in general despite my reservations about a number of points made by the Minister yesterday.

The current system does not work. Many hours of Garda time are spent serving warrants and collecting fines. The Minister stated that there had been little change in how fines were collected since the foundation of the State. Like me, the Ceann Comhairle has been a Member for a long time. Hardship and medical grounds used to be taken into account when fines were imposed. Whoever was the Minister for justice at the time had the right to reduce those fines, but that power was done away with a number of years ago after it was found in court to be unlawful. More often than not, many Ministers for justice, working in conjunction with departmental officials, reduced fines to manageable proportions when people made cases to them on medical or hardship grounds.

Judges serve fines on people without taking into account their ability to pay. Many people have attended my clinic because judges fined them €500 or €1,000 for having car tax that was two or three months out of date or for not paying their television licence fees. The judges who did this well knew that the people in question never had the ability to pay that kind of money out of, for example, their unemployment social welfare payments. This legislation introduced by the then Minister, Mr. Dermot Ahern, goes some way towards dealing with that issue.

No person should need to go to prison for a fine that relates to a television licence or lower level misdemeanours. Smuggling cigarettes or tobacco and laundering oil and diesel are different issues, but community service is the way forward in respect of lower level fines. Once the justice system implements a fine or orders community work, the ensuing administration should be performed within the local authority system. Gardaí spend too much time trying to serve warrants and collect moneys.

More often than not they get a million and one excuses, so they must repeatedly re-serve the warrant. In many cases, if people do not pay fines, they are taken off to Wheatfield, Mountjoy, Castlerea or elsewhere. Usually, two gardaí in a garda car or a taxi will accompany a person to prison. However, within 24 hours, or in many cases within a few hours, the prison governor will release the person. Meanwhile, the gardaí have returned home so the governor provides the released person with a bus or train voucher to go home. The current system is wasting taxpayers' money.

For that reason, rather than imposing a fine that a person cannot pay, community service would enable such people to pay back their debt to society. Such a provision is included in this Bill. The people involved could thereby work in a local GAA or rugby club, or with local authorities which operate social and community employment schemes throughout the country.

The Minister should clearly state that he does not want fines imposed on people for such matters, although ultimately that is a matter for the Judiciary whose members are independent of the Executive. None the less, the message should go out loud and clear that it is better to impose community service orders rather than fines, which some people do not have a hope in hell of paying.

I have serious concerns about attachment of earnings orders whereby fines are deducted directly from wages. The Minister says that will be a last resort but perhaps he will clarify in his reply to this debate where the Data Protection Act comes into this. If an employer receives a letter from the Courts Service or the Revenue Commissioners instructing him or her to stop €200 out of a person's wages over the next three, six or 12 months, it may damage the employee's standing with an employer. The Minister should clarify how he expects that system to operate because it would have a damaging effect on the employer-employee relationship. How can such a system get around the provisions of the Data Protection Act? Currently, even within this House, we are all subject to data protection legislation, and rightly so. None the less I have serious concerns about that particular issue.

The Minister stated that approximately 7,500 people are imprisoned annually for non-payment of fines. That is a substantial number with a consequent cost to the State, including garda manpower and the cost of transporting people to and from prison. Imprisonment for non-payment of fines should be a last resort. In addition, it is also causing overcrowding in prisons for minor misdemeanours. It is certainly not in the taxpayers' interests to lock up people for an hour or two just because they have not paid a television licence fee or car tax for a few months.

While I welcome the Bill generally, I feel the attachment of earnings order is a dangerous road to take. The administration of such a system will be hampered by the abolition of town councils. We will have super county councils throughout the country which will have rate, rent and revenue collectors. Instead of wasting Garda manpower, the collection of fines should be handed over to local authorities. Alternatively, community service orders could also be operated by local councils at the direction of a judge.

I had a great regard for the old system which was operated fairly and meaningfully by previous Ministers for Justice. At that time, if someone was not in a position to make a payment, the Minister of the day, in conjunction with his or her officials, would decide on compassionate grounds to reduce the fine or in some cases write it off. We have become so self-righteous over the years that people did not like that system. They felt that Ministers were abusing the system, although I certainly never found that to be the case. We have moved on, however, and are now dealing with this legislation.

While I hope the Bill will be passed as quickly as possible, I would ask the Minister to re-examine the attachment of earnings orders which will do serious damage to employer-employee relations. It could, in effect, cause a person to lose out on promotion or lose his or her job. I hope the Minister will take into account some of the reservations that have been raised during this Second Stage debate.

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