Fines should be indexed against inflation and should vary to take account of offenders' ability to pay, according to the Law Reform Commission.
The proposals are made in its latest report, The Indexation of Fines: a Review of Developments, published today. This is the second report on the indexation of fines to be published by the Law Reform Commission, but the first, published in 1991, did not result in reform of the legislation.
The commission recognised then that the value of fines became eroded over time by inflation. It considered a system where the maximum fines attached to specific offences could be updated in line with inflation.
That proposal is also made in the latest report, but it includes as well a proposal for the court, when imposing fines, "insofar as practicable, to have regard to the financial circumstances of the offender, the nature of the burden that payment of a particular fine will impose upon the offender and his dependents."
This should be the case even when it would have the effect of increasing or reducing the fine, according to the report, in order to convey "the principle of equality of impact upon offenders of different means".
However, it stressed that such provision in a new law should not prejudice the general discretion of the sentencing judge to impose a penalty that is "appropriate and just having regard to all the circumstances of the case".
This meets the general principle of judicial independence and discretion that underlies the Irish criminal justice system.
The principle of indexing fines to allow for inflation was already introduced in two recent pieces of legislation, the 1997 Litter Pollution Act and the 2001 Waster Management (Amendment) Act. These provide for the updating of on-the-spot fines for littering, to take inflation into account.
While welcoming this development, the commission stresses the need for a systematic approach rather than the introduction of indexation on a piecemeal basis. It proposes. therefore, the repeal of this scheme and the introduction of a general indexation of all fines, which would apply to fines for summary offences across the full spectrum of legislation.
Such a system exists in most other common-law jurisdictions, the report says.
In its 1991, report, it considered the option of a "unit" fines system, where units were a prescribed fraction of the income of the offender. This would allow both for inflation and for taking account of the means of the offender.
However, in this report the Law Reform Commission says that when such a system was introduced in England and Wales in 1992 it was abandoned after a year because of the perception that very high fines were being imposed for minor offences.
The commission's proposals are likely to be carefully considered by the Government, as it is already committed in the Programme for Government to the reform of the fines system, including considering the principle that fines should be related to ability to pay.