The Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals by the Director of Public Prosecutions and other State respondents over committal warrants issued for two men who had not paid District Court fines. It upheld the High Court’s decision to quash the warrants, but removed the direction requiring the DPP to begin proceedings under the Fines (Payment and Recovery) Act 2014.
The judgment, delivered by Mahon J on 16 November 2017, concerned fines imposed before the 2014 Act took effect on 11 January 2016. In both cases, the payment period had expired before that date, while the committal warrants were issued afterwards.
Gavin Owens had been fined €500 for driving without insurance and given four months to pay. Patrick Dooley had been fined €500 for each of four theft and fraud offences, with 90 days to pay. The judgment records that neither man challenged his conviction or sentence, or disputed that the fines remained unpaid.
The men argued that the warrants were unlawful because the safeguards in the 2014 Act had not been applied. The State argued that the Act introduced substantive changes and should operate prospectively, so the earlier enforcement process remained applicable to fines imposed before commencement.
The Court of Appeal held that section 22 of the 2014 Act made the new regime applicable from its commencement to any relevant unpaid penal sum under the earlier legislation. It considered that reading the provision as covering only fines imposed after commencement would leave section 22 without a meaningful purpose.
The court characterised the change as one to the procedure for enforcing fines, rather than to the fines or the underlying liability. The new regime made imprisonment for non-payment less likely and applied to the men’s cases because their warrants were issued after the Act commenced.
The court therefore dismissed the appeals against quashing the warrants. It separately quashed the High Court’s order directing the DPP to initiate section 7 proceedings. Whether to bring such proceedings, the appeal judgment said, remained for the DPP to decide.