Enforcement of Court Fines
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registration of a fine against a vehicle, so that outstanding fines can be collected when the vehicle is re-taxed or changes ownership.
4.18 The Courts Service agrees that the range of options for the enforcement of fines should be broadened. However, the introduction of the methods referred to above would require legislative changes. There could also be practical difficulties in implementing some of the options. For example, accounting for instalment payments, particularly for small fine amounts, could be administratively expensive. The relative effectiveness of the various options would need to be examined, perhaps on a pilot basis, before being introduced generally. 4.19 When this report was being finalised, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform stated that its Criminal Law Reform Division was in the early stages of preparing an ‘Attachment of Earnings Bill’.
Enforcement of Licence Endorsements and Driving Disqualifications 4.20 In certain motoring offence cases, the judge may order that the offender’s driving licence be endorsed or that he/she be disqualified from driving for a stated period. The extent to which such penalties are enforced is not known. 4.21 All orders for driving disqualifications and endorsements are recorded manually by court office staff in ‘driver licence registers’. Notice of disqualifications and endorsements is also sent to the driver licensing sections of the local authorities where offenders reside and to the Department of the Environment and Local Government. 4.22 When a driving licence is surrendered to the court office, details of the licence are recorded on the manual register. In Dublin, details of licences handed in are also recorded on the computerised fine case tracking system. 4.23 There is some evidence that disqualification and endorsement orders may not be effectively enforced in a significant proportion of cases. Analysis of the results of 1998 fine cases in Dublin shows that judges ordered disqualification or licence endorsement in 1,200 cases. Around 1,000 of these also had a fine imposed. Almost a third of those fines remained unpaid in September 1999, despite the issue of warrants. Where fines remain unpaid, it may be the case that disqualifications or endorsements had not been effected. Furthermore, the fine case tracking system records licence details in relation to only 10 of the 1,200 endorsement or disqualification cases. This suggests that less than 1% of offenders had handed in their licences to the court offices. 4.24 Monitoring of the enforcement of disqualifications and endorsements should become easier when both the Courts Service’s national Criminal Case Tracking System and the Department of the Environment and Local Government’s National Driver File are fully operational. In the meantime, the Courts Service should investigate further the extent of enforcement of disqualifications and endorsements and consider what changes in procedures, if any, would be appropriate in the interim to ensure that court orders are implemented.
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