Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

We looked at this very carefully and wanted to be fair to people. Equally, we did not want to overburden the system with this new provision which has been welcomed by everyone. It is not unreasonable to expect somebody fined a sum of up to €100 to pay it in one go given that 70% of all fines are for road traffic offences.

While Senator Regan's proposal to restrict this to non-road traffic offences might be sound and good, the Attorney General would probably not run the rule over it on the basis that it is relatively arbitrary. We are trying to be fair to people in this legislation. If people were be fined similar amounts for different offences, some would be able to pay by instalment while others would not. The idea of this legislation is to have equality of impact. If one was to try to apply this provision to one type of offence, as opposed to others, it would not be fair. It was suggested that the threshold should be higher but I considered, in the circumstances, that the figure of €100 placed an onus on the Courts Service to allow for instalment procedures for fines above what is a relatively small figure. While I accept people may be in difficulty, the provisions on capacity to pay will have already kicked in under the legislation.