IT LOOKED like an ordinary enough event when John O'Meara showed up at Ardfinnan Garda station in Tipperary on Wednesday morning.

He had come, bag in hand, to place himself in custody, by agreement with the local gardai. What was unusual was that it was all of 4 1/2 years since a District Court had sent him to jail. Somehow, by a combination of legal process and sluggish administration, he had never gone to prison. In the end he grew tired of the threat of imprisonment hanging over him, and volunteered to serve his time.

It was then that the controversy began. District Judge Michael Patwell realised that the system had somehow contrived to ensure that his original court order had become almost meaningless - a dusty, yellowing document taking up space in a Garda filing cabinet.

Imprisonment had been delayed, he decided, because the case had been petitioned to the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen. Judge Pat well accused her of interfering with the courts, an interpretation rejected by department officials.

The warrant was just one of thousands of similar orders lying almost unnoticed in Garda stations throughout the State. According to the president of the District Court, Judge Peter Smithwick, a lack of action on these orders dilutes the power of judges and damages their standing.

ON JUNE 6th, 1992, John O'Meara, of Ardfinnan, borrowed his father's orcycle, for which he was not insured. He was taking a corner on a narrow road near the village of Grange, not far from Ardfinnan, when he struck a car coming from the opposite direction. The vehicles were damaged but no one was hurt. He was prosecuted for dangerous driving and for driving without insurance.

On July 27th, 1992, he was convicted in Cahir District Court by Judge Patwell and sentenced to three and five months' imprisonment, the sentences to run concurrently.

He appealed the case to Clonmel Circuit Court, which affirmed the original order on September 27th, 1993.

O'Meara petitioned the case to the then Minister for Justice, Mrs Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. Having considered it, she decided there was no reason to alter the result. She wrote a letter to the local superintendent - in Cahir station - on November 14th, 1994, saying she was "unable to find sufficient grounds for modifying the decision of the court".

It now looked certain that the committal order would be acted on, but it was not. And a change of government meant there was a new Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen.

O'Meara went to the local Fine Gael TD, Theresa Ahearn. She believes she was involved in the second petition but not the first. She remembers being told that O'Meara (in his late 20s) had a new job at SAP, a local tree nursery, and that it would be a "lost opportunity" if he had to go to prison.

She wrote to the Minister. She is not aware of any connection between O'Meara and Fine Gael and so far as she knows he "never came to any meetings or subscribed" to the party. She was acting, she says, as she would for any constituent.

Mrs Owen replied to Ms Ahearn that she was having "further inquiries made in the matter" and added: "This acknowledgement may be produced to the gardai as confirmation that the above sentence is under repetition".

The Minister's letter was dated April 10th, 1995. On the same date Ms Ahearn sent a copy of the letter to the superintendent in Cahir, along with a covering note.

It appears that the superintendent or someone acting for him in Cahir passed on the letter to Ardfinnan station marked "for your information". Supt Ned O'Dwyer was not available to comment this week but other gardai said this is normal procedure for news about petitions.

Towards the end of 1996, O'Meara decided finally it was time to get those warrants out of the way and went to Ardfinnan station to say he wanted to serve his time.

The local gardai dug the warrants out of the file and discovered they dated from July 1992. As such warrants expire after six months, they had to be renewed by the court.

When renewal of the warrants was sought before Judge Patwell, he demanded to see the file and sought a full explanation from Insp Jim Fitzgerald, of Cahir Garda station, for the failure to have the warrants executed. The judge highlighted Mrs Owen's letter of April 1995. No Garda superintendent could ignore such a letter, he said, and it had the effect of putting a stay on the order.

The warrants were duly renewed and last Wednesday O'Meara started his sentence.

THE OFFENCE was relatively minor and O'Meara does not deserve national publicity for it, but the case highlights the power of a letter from the Department of Justice even if, as it appears in this instance, gardai attached undue significance to it.

The law gives the Minister power to alter sentences. Petitions have generally concerned fines and where a fine is under petition, gardai are not expected to act on the warrant until the Minister's decision is known.

Committal orders are meant to be different - they are commands from the court and the Garda has no discretion in the matter. It appears that the gardai in Tipperary treated the petitions of the O'Meara warrants as if they were petitions about fines.

Garda and legal sources say there are many committal orders which have not been acted on in stations throughout the State, including warrants which are not the subject of petition. According to one Garda source it occasionally "serves a purpose" to leave the threat of jail hanging over an offender.

While most petitions concern fines, it is also open to offenders to ask the Minister to reduce a prison sentence. However, these cases are meant to be considered by the Minister while the offender is in jail. A successful petition would lead to an early release date.

Up to mid 1995, the Department of Justice received about 5,000 petitions annually. At the end of April 1995 the High Court issued a judgment in a case taken by retired District Judge Patrick Brennan against Mrs Geoghegan Quinn. The High Court said that, while the petitions system was not unconstitutional, ministers should modify sentences only in the "rarest of circumstances".

Since then, according to the Department, the rate of petitions has slowed, with about 1,600 received in 1996. Of these, about three quarters led to an alteration of a fine.

According to Judge Smithwick, there is a place for such a petitions system, and the law makes it clear that the Minister "unquestionably has the right to reduce fines and the power to free a prisoner before termination of their sentence.

"Obviously the petitions system an be abused as well as used, but it should be used sparingly and I think it was overused in the past," he says. He suggests it should be limited to "the odd case where a person's financial circumstances suddenly disimprove, or there is a strong humanitarian reason".

An obvious danger is that politicians come to believe the petitions system, as currently practised, is a way to win favour from voters. There is no doubt that in the past, some thought of a successful petition as a simple trade - freedom or lower fines in return for votes.

"It should be possible to devise checks on the petitions system so that it stays out of politics," according to Judge Smithwick. Asked if he thought some sort of independent body should have the job of handling petitions, he said it "wouldn't be a bad thing". The failure to act on warrants diluted the power of judges and was "undesirable".