David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this issue, which was discussed and debated during the preparation of this legislation. As the Senator knows, the purpose of this Bill is to provide part of the legislative framework necessary for the introduction of a third payment option for road traffic offences in respect of which a fixed-charge notice may be served under Part 3 of the Road Traffic Act 2010. This third payment option will give a person to whom a District Court summons has been issued an alternative to attending court in respect of an alleged road traffic offence for which he or she was originally issued with a fixed-charge notice.

A fixed-charge notice provides for two payment options before a summons is issued requiring a person to attend court: a first period of 28 days during which the person may pay the fixed amount, followed by a second consecutive period of 28 days during which the person may pay the fixed amount plus 50%. The key objective now proposed is to provide a third payment option involving the payment of the fixed amount plus 100%, as provided for in section 44 of the Road Traffic Act 2010, which has yet to be commenced. The technical solution for the deduction of the third payment option has been developed under the aegis of the working group on the criminal justice fixed-charge processing system, which is jointly chaired by the Department of Justice and Equality and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport.This solution gives rise to the amendment of the Courts Act 1986 now proposed in the Bill as the Act currently operates on the basis of summonses issued as a singular document by the District Court office which is then conveyed, electronically or otherwise, to the applicant or the agent for service. It is proposed to administer arrangements to use the third payment option which involves the Garda Síochána taking on the printing of District Court summonses in order to facilitate the integrated printing in the cases of fixed-charge notice of a summons and a fixed-charge notice.

I mentioned on Second Stage, but by way of information, 325,762 fixed-charge notices were issued and 234,000 were paid, which is a 72% payment rate. The intention here is to increase that payment rate. The suggestion put forward by the Senator is a good suggestion and has been considered, but the conclusion reached was that this third payment option will improve matters considerably. The whole system of issuing and recording and so on has improved dramatically also. The situation where somebody would get a summons not having received the original fixed-charge notice, should not happen anymore. As we know, An Post is extremely reliable. It will now be assumed that when something is posted or sent out, it is actually sent out and received. There are three different goes at it, as it were. Rather than going to the administrative work and burden of having to register every single charge, and one can see the volume here, it is now considered that this approach will actually work which is why we are doing this.