Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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1123. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the full year saving to the Exchequer of commuting all prison sentences of six months or less for non-payment of fines and replace it with community service orders. [38659/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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While it is not possible to provide detailed costings I can inform the Deputy that the number of committals to prison for non-payment of a court order fine in 2012 was 8,304.

I am strongly of the view that we need to keep the numbers of people committed to prison for the non-payment of fines to the absolute minimum. I recently published the Fines Payment and Recovery Bill which represents a major reform of our fine payment and recovery system and provides for the payment of fines by instalment and attachment of earnings.

Allowing everyone to pay a fine by instalment and introducing attachment of earnings are important new reforms to the fine collection system which will lead to improved collection rates for fines. The new measures provided for, combined with the requirement that judges must take a person’s financial circumstances into account when setting a fine, should result in a reduction in the number of people committed to prison.

When this Bill is enacted, it will be easier for people to pay a fine and where they fail to do so, there will be sufficient alternatives available to the courts to all but eliminate the need to commit anyone to prison for the non-payment of fines.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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1124. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of fines-related only prison sentences of six months or less over the past 12 months; and if he will provide in tabular form a breakdown of these sentences by the number of months served. [38660/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I can advise the Deputy that the information requested is not readily available. I will forward the reply to the Deputy as soon as the information is to hand.

However, in 2012 there were a total of 8,304 committals to prison for non-payment of a Court ordered fine. Based on a statistical sample, the Irish Prison Service has determined that the vast majority of these committals spent less than 2 days in custody and on average spent 1 day or part of a day in custody.