Poor box used in 540 cases of driving offences in first three months

In spite of Government plans to scrap the court "poor box" and legislation preventing it from being used as an alternative to fines or penalty points, judges in the first three months of this year directed offenders in 540 driving cases to contribute to the fund.

Courts use the poor box to impose a financial contribution on a defendant which is given to charity.

The charge is in lieu of the person receiving a criminal conviction.

The judge has discretion over the amount to be paid and the destination of the money.

Figures released by the Department of Justice for January to March 2014 show that in January of this year the box was used in 219 cases.

It was used 154 times in February and 166 times in March.

In 10 of the 26 court districts the poor box was availed of less than five times throughout the entire three-month period when dealing with driving offences.

In fact, five of the districts did not use it at all, including Galway county and Waterford City.

Courts in the Dublin Metropolitan District availed of it most frequently over the three months, a total of 178 times.

It was also popular in Cork county district where it was used 56 times, 29 of them in March.

However, the legality of using the box for driving offences in which penalty points should be imposed, was raised by a High Court judge as recently as February.

At that point Justice Gerard Hogan said it cannot be used as an alternative to imposing penalty points and a fine in speeding cases.

The judge said the use of the poor box is so “inveterate” that it must now be considered to be part of common law which was adopted in our system by the coming into force of the Constitution in 1937.

However, he said the use of the Probation Act in penalty point cases had been specifically disapplied by the 2010 Road Traffic Act (Section 55).

He said the district court could not impose an “informal sanction”, such as a donation to the poor box, because this would amount to an indirect circumvention of statutory provisions.

Deputy Tommy Broughan, to whom Justice Minister Alan Shatter released the figures following a parliamentary question, criticised the “lackadaisical” approach taken by the judiciary to theissue.

He said that through road traffic legislation the Oireachtas had clearly indicated the box was not to be used for that type of offence yet the judiciary had “defied” the will of the people represented by the elected members.

He said there needed to be a level playing field for everyone coming before the courts.

“There does seem to be the case that if it is a well-off person who has given other service, the judges are prepared to let them take an easy way out,” he said.

The Department of Justice pointed out that the Government recently approved the drafting of legislation to abolish the court poor box and replace it with a “statutory reparation fund to provide for a fair, equitable and transparent system of reparation that will apply only to minor offences dealt with by the District Court”.