Plan to deal with 120k outstanding Garda warrants
It follows the recent publication of a Garda Ombudsman report which revealed a woman had been killed by her son when he was supposed to have been in prison on a committal warrant.
The report detailed how a series of garda errors, and poor communication between gardaí, the courts and prison staff, resulted in a failure to execute a committal warrant for Celyn Eadon in February 2011. While free, the 19-year-old stabbed his mother Noreen Kelly-Eadon to death at her home in Castlebar, Co Mayo.
Most recent figures show there were 122,000 outstanding warrants in Garda stations as of January 2014. These included:
- 31,000 bench warrants: issued for people who fail to attend court and who are unlawfully at large and may commit further offences;
- 2,500 committal warrants: for people who have been sent to prison after conviction or on remand;
- 88,600 penal warrants: for people who have failed to pay court-imposed fines
A report, published by the Garda Inspectorate last November, said gardaí should not execute penal warrants — which account for around 70% of all warrants — saying it involved a “daily waste of resources” for gardaí.
It said there was “a significant amount of money in unpaid fines that will effectively never be collected”.
It said one district warrant unit had outstanding fines amounting to €3.4m, while a second district unit had €1m of fines on hand.
Garda figures suggest that two internal audits found a fifth of all warrants could not be physically located.
The Irish Examiner has learned that a new warrant system should be in place by year’s end.
“An Garda Síochána is determined to deal with the long standing issues surrounding the handling and execution of all warrants,” a Garda spokesman said.
Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan set up a warrants review group last year headed by Assistant Commissioner (Crime and Security) John O’Mahoney.
The Garda spokesman said: “An internal working group has been examining the administrative procedures relating to all warrants (this includes penal warrants but also all other types of warrants) such as the tracking of warrants and the timely execution of warrants.”
He said that three pilots have been undertaken in three Garda divisions and that the results of these are being evaluated.
It is understood that the pilots are in Dublin Metropolitan Region North, Galway and Cavan/Monaghan, and that the evaluation will be completed very shortly.
