Ivana Bacik (Independent)

Senator Regan raised a point I should have mentioned in response to the Minister's reference to road traffic cases. That conjures up a very different picture of somebody who, as Senator Regan said, owns a car and, therefore, has some means. In that situation, it may well be that most of the fines are more than €100.

My experience of cases where fines are imposed are not in the road traffic cases but public order offences, possession of cannabis and prostitution-related offences where people are, for the most part, genuinely impecunious. Some €100 is a significant amount of money in terms of loitering and soliciting and public order offences. Routinely fines of €50 are imposed in those instances. It is not that there are few cases where fines of less than €100 are imposed. They tend to be imposed where people genuinely have difficulty paying it in one instalment.