Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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211. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of persons who were sentenced to jail for non-payment of fines in 2012 and 2013; the amount the fines involved and the length of sentence they served. [31890/14]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware the Fines (Payment and Recovery) Act 2014 was signed into law by the President on 16 April 2014. The aim of the legislation is to improve the rate of fine default and reduce to the greatest extent possible the use of imprisonment as a sanction for fine default. It provides that the Court imposing a fine shall take into account a person's financial circumstances. It further provides, inter alia, that where a person fails to pay a fine by the due date the Court may make an attachment order to earnings as a means of recovering an unpaid fine. The Act does not, however, provide that the Court may make an attachment order to social welfare payments.

A Project Board is in place to oversee the implementation of the Act and to deal with such issues as the design and development of new systems to support the new payment arrangements. The intention is that the Act will be commenced in stages while necessary regulations are introduced and it is envisaged that the first provision to be commenced later this year will be the provision for payment by instalments.

I can advise the Deputy that the number of committals to prison as a consequence of the non-payment of a court ordered fine during 2013 was 8,121. This represented a 2.2% decrease on the 2012 figure of 8,304.

The proportion of persons in custody for non-payment of fines at any time is a minute fraction of the overall prisoner population. To illustrate this point on 15 July 2014, 5 prisoners or 0.1 % of the prison population of 3,978 fell into this category.