Government urged to add unpaid traffic fines to road tax bills

The Government should consider adding unpaid road traffic fines to motor tax bills to ease the burden on the courts and the gardaí in dealing with such cases.

The Department of Justice is in contact with the Department of Transport on foot of recommendations contained in the report of a top-level expert group. The Working Group on Efficiency Measures in the Criminal Justice System said that 71% of the district court’s total caseload was taken up with road traffic cases.

The report said a number of measures it had recommended had already taken place, including changes to the escort of prisoners — resulting in savings of €100,000 per month in Garda escorts.

The working group was set up in Nov 2011 at the request of Chief Justice Susan Denham and Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

The report said a presentation from Judge William Hamill gave an insight into experiences in the district court with traffic cases.

“Considerable avoidable costs and inefficiencies result from invalid warrants which need to be cancelled and reissued or where valid warrants are issued but are not executed,” said the report.

It said contributing causes include a lack of powers to seek proof of identity, including date of birth, and vehicles improperly or incompletely registered.

“The judge referred to a solution previously suggested by the Courts Service that consideration be given to adding outstanding road traffic fines to the motor tax bill for a vehicle, rather than involving highly trained gardaí and the courts system in the ongoing work, including administrative work, associated with trying to collect such fines.”

It said the group believed these matters should be explored with the Department of Transport and noted that the Department of Justice was doing this.

Other initiatives include:

- Pilot schemes to centralise custody cases in four court districts — Letterkenny, Ennis, Gorey and Trim;

- Garda Grace (Garda Response to a Changing Environment) programme in four centres (Cork, Limerick, Castlerea and Ronanstown) had resulted in savings in manpower, court time and transport estimated at €105,000 a month;

- New pre-trial procedures in circuit courts to speed up trials;

- Expansion of video conferencing negating the need to transport prisoners to courts.