Motorist forced to emigrate after wrongful conviction and driving ban

A motorist wrongly convicted following the fixed-charge notice scandal was imprisoned, banned from driving for five years, and forced to emigrate to find work as a result.

Gardaí have apologised and are seeking to get the conviction overturned, but no explanation was offered in their letter to the man as to how the error occurred.

It emerged this year that 14,700 people wrongly got convictions and court-imposed penalties, including the imposition of penalty points, despite never being sent a fixed-charge notice.