COURT POOR BOX STILL HELPING DRIVERS AVOID PENALTY POINTS
HUNDREDS of drivers are still avoiding penalty points by making donations to the poor box, even though the High Court ruled the practice was wrong under road traffic laws.
New figures released to the Irish Daily Mail under Freedom of Information show that 242 motorists have avoided getting points since 2016 after making a contribution.
Donating to the poor box allows the driver to escape a conviction and to avoid getting penalty points where they apply.
However, Judge Gerard Hogan ruled, in the High Court in February 2014, that use of the poor box for penalty point offences was specifically barred under the Road Traffic Act 2010. He said this legislation removed the discretion of judges in such cases.
Despite this, 119 contributions were made to the poor box in 2016, there were 106 last year, and 17 in the first ten months of this year.
Giving poor box donations is a non-statutory system used by the district courts to impose a
fine, to be given to charity, instead of a criminal conviction.
Judge Hogan’s ruling was made in the case of a driver who had been refused the use of the poor box after speeding.
The judge said that the District Court ‘enjoys no jurisdiction to impose an informal sanction, short of actual conviction, such as accepting a donation to the poor box’.
His ruling made it mandatory for all drivers to be hit with penalty points and a fine upon conviction.
Earlier this year Transport Minister Shane Ross said using the poor box was sending the ‘wrong message’ to drivers.
He said district court judges should be given guidelines for dealing with road traffic cases to address wide variances in sentencing.
He told RTÉ in January: ‘Some people will take much greater chances, thinking they’re just going to get a very lenient fine.
‘What I want to see is a consistency among the judges in the penalties they impose after conviction so that people who are thinking of offending, or who have offended, can be absolutely certain that they will get a certain degree of penalty.
‘That’s why we are introducing the automatic disqualification for drink driving so no one can be under the misapprehension that they may possibly not get a disqualification or they might even get off with three penalty points.
‘I think judges should be given guidelines in terms of sentences. I think they take too much discretion.’
Department of Justice figures previously showed that more than 1,500 drivers avoided penalty points between 2014 and May 2015 after they made a poor box donation. In such cases, the presiding judge would have discretion over which charity is chosen for the donation.
In his ruling in 2014, Judge Hogan found that the poor box could not be used as an ‘alternative’ to penalty points and a fine in speeding cases.
He also said that despite its ‘obscure and uncertain origins’, the use of the poor box in other certain cases is of such long-standing and widespread use that it must now be considered part of common law, which was adopted in our system by the coming into force of the Constitution in 1937 (under Article 50.1).
However, the 2010 Road Traffic Act (Section 55) specifically barred penalty point offences being dismissed under the Probation Act, he said.
The District Court could not impose an ‘informal sanction’, such as a donation to the poor box, because it would amount to an indirect circumvention of statutory provisions.
The judge also said that while there was previous case law in which it was found a donation to the poor box was acceptable in a sexual assault case, the difference here was that the Oireachtas had provided for mandatory sanctions in certain road traffic cases.
No such mandatory penalties were provided in sexual assault cases and therefore the District Court’s common law power to accept a donation in lieu of formal conviction (in such cases) ‘continues in principle to hold full sway’.
Mr Ross said the poor box should no longer be in existence. ‘The poor box is still in existence despite the fact that the High Court actually ruled that it shouldn’t be in existence,’ he said. ‘I’m not interfering; I’m just suggesting that guidelines be there to guide the judges. I don’t think they should resist that in any way.’
Following his successful campaign to bring in new drink-driving legislation, Mr Ross has now turned his attention to reducing road deaths. He will seek Cabinet approval for greatly increasing speeding penalties in a major overhaul of the system, which was first revealed in the Irish Daily Mail last month.
It would mean speeding would no longer be viewed as a single offence and could mean hefty points and fines and even dangerous driving charges.
‘People will take greater chances’
Judges should be given guidelines