THE Department of Social Welfare has said it will investigate reports that new age travellers are having their court fines paid from community welfare funds.
This follows the Southern Health Board admitting it has paid such fines "on one or two occasions" in west Cork. But gardai say it has happened on a number of occasions.
The matter will be raised at the next meeting of the Southern Health Board by Dail deputy and board member, Mr Batt O'Keeffe, who said it was an abuse of funds.
Supplementary welfare allowances are intended for emergency use only to relieve genuine hardship on families," he said.
One new age traveller living in west Cork was recently fined £300 for not having his vehicle insured. Gardai claim the fine was paid by the health board.
They claim they are entitled to have the fine paid for them and have successfully made their case to the health board officers," said a garda.
It was making the job of stopping and bringing to court people who had broken the law very difficult.
There is not much point in the court fining people if they do not have to pay. It certainly means the culprits have no incentive to tax or insure their vehicles," he added.
The Department of Social Welfare said it had no scheme for paying court fines for people on social welfare and a spokesman said the claims would be investigated.
A spokesman for the Southern Health Board, which covers Cork and Kerry, said it was aware of two instances of court fines being paid from supplementary welfare allowances in west Cork.
They included a £50 fine for a member of the travelling community and £300 for a large family who could not afford the fine.
Mr O'Keeffe said he considered this a very dangerous precedent and believed the ability of the person being fined was normally taken into account by the court.
It just does not make any sense to spend money in this way, having one Government Department handing over money to another. There is a danger now that we will have a flood of applications from people to welfare officers to pay their court fines," he said.