Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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413. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality further to Parliamentary Question No. 273 of 15 October 2013, if he will provide a breakdown of the courts in all of the districts managed by the Courts Service where motorists did not receive a conviction under the Road Traffic Acts because they instead agreed to make a donation to charity. [44726/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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The court poor box is a non-statutory system used mostly by the District Courts to impose a financial charge on a defendant to be used for a charitable purpose, usually instead of imposing a criminal conviction. Payments made to the court poor box are accounted for by the court office concerned and the accounting procedures are subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Generally, charities are the recipients of poor box contributions but the decision is solely at the discretion of the Judge who is independent in the matter of sentencing, as in other matters concerning the exercise of judicial functions, subject only to the Constitution and the law. In order to be of assistance to the Deputy, I have had enquiries made and the table below shows the number of defendants recorded on the Courts Service Criminal Case Tracking System (CCTS) who were before the court for offences under the Road Traffic Act and the outcome of whose cases involved payments to the Poor Box. None of these people were convicted of the offences.