Warrants issued over unpaid court fines is hitting resources, says Longford garda boss
Garda resources are facing “additional challenges” in executing dozens of warrants issued by Longford courts on a weekly basis.
The claim was made this week by Longford Superintendent Jim Delaney on foot of a special investigation by the Leader this week which has found how hundreds of thousands of euro in fines imposed in Longford Courts has gone unpaid.
Supt Delaney said when a person who fails to turn up to pay a court enforced fine, the burden of responsibility consequently falls on gardaí to track the individual down, bringing with it a considerable demand on the force's day to day workings.
“I don't want to criticise the (warrants) process as it is obviously there for a reason but it certainly puts an added burden our already limited resources,” he said.
The Longford garda chief revealed his officers would routinely “turn around” or execute over 100 warrants each year, something he admitted was no pushover for rank and file members of the force.
“It's not straightforward and there are quite a lot of people that would be transient and that when a person leaves the jurisdiction we would then follow that up with various agencies like Interpol,” he said.
“Then there are people who, as we execute warrants, take warrants but we, as an organisation, do everything in our power to execute a warrant,” he said.