Many people have gone to court when they refused to pay their fines and they have succeeded. The Judiciary are not monsters either. There were occasions on which people got off because they were able to give a reasonable explanation.
I have dealt with the question of the appointment of wardens. As regards the training of wardens, they get about a week's training and then they carry out their duties under surveillance to see if they can do the job properly. They are taken back to do refresher courses from time to time. This will be continued under the new system. It is a very good idea and there is no reason why training should not proceed along these lines.
With regard to the financing of the scheme, the local authority have the option of adopting and continuing to operate it. The scheme is primarily a local one and the decision to start or continue it must be taken locally. At present, fines on the spot are payable by offenders at a Garda station and the money so collected accrues to the Road Fund. The costs of the existing warden services are met from the Garda Vote, towards which the Road Fund is contributing about £1 million a year; it is £1 million this year anyway. The Department of Justice, in turn, pay the local authorities, who are at present administering the scheme in Dublin and Cork, the costs incurred by them. This is an unnecessary and cumbersome system of administration. The previous Government agreed that in future when a warden service would be directly administered by the local authorities fines on the spot would be paid to the local authorities and retained by them. I fully agree with this principle and I have included it in the Bill.
A local authority who operates this service may have a surplus. They will be free to use such a surplus for road traffic purposes in accordance with regulations to be made by the Minister. This is an exact parallel with the system which applies at present to income derived from parking meters and disc parking as it operates in Cork. No question of my paying a subsidy arises in such cases. The decision to operate a warden service will rest with each local authority, after consultation with the Garda Commissioner. The Garda authorities might decide for good reasons that a warden service was not necessary in a particular area. They might be in a position to control parking arrangements without the necessity for wardens and it would be inappropriate that, in such circumstances, I should be statutorily obliged to pay the cost of an unnecessary service. On the other hand, circumstances could arise where the Commissioner agreed with the proposals of the local authority to appoint wardens, the scheme was being operated in the interests of traffic, but causing a significant loss of money to the local authority. It is possible that some contribution might be justified in that case towards the cost incurred by that authority.
Again, I stress that the idea is to try to have a freer flow of traffic, a fairer way of parking and, particularly, to ensure that people who use motor vehicles on the roads tax those vehicles because, as is well known, for some years past, many people have not been taxing their motor vehicles. Apart entirely from anything else, this means a terrific loss of revenue. I am amazed to hear people who should know better talking about harassing the motorist. The only motorist who is harassed is the man or woman who breaks the law.
There is no intention here to do anything to the person who pays his tax and displays his disc or to people who park in a normal way. We all must agree that if we are law abiding we should ensure that other people are law abiding also. It is in the common good that this should be done and I believe there will be a general welcome for this legislation. The one thing which seems to annoy motorists most is the fact that people can drive vehicles without paying taxation. I met a very irate person recently who had to pay a parking fine of £2. He did not complain about that, but what annoyed him was that parked beside his car was an untaxed car which, because a shilling had been put in the parking meter, was allowed to stay there without interference from the same traffic warden. This is wrong and it should not be allowed to continue. That is why I propose to try to prevent it continuing.
I must be flexible in regard to the question of the payment of a subsidy towards the running of the scheme. I propose to make the position clear to all local authorities when the Bill becomes law to assist them in their decision on whether or not to operate a warden service. It is a matter for each local authority to decide.
Another optional element of the scheme, as I said before, is that the person who gets a ticket need not pay but can instead decide to go to court. This is the answer to any suggestion of unfairness on the part of a warden. Again, I should like to refer to the complimentary remarks by Deputies about existing wardens. Quite a number of Deputies paid tributes to them for the excellent way in which they are doing their job.
Various points of detail were raised which would seem to be more appropriate to Committee Stage. However, it may be helpful if I make a few comments on them at this stage. Deputy Faulkner hoped there would be a uniform code for fines on the spot and wondered whether the amounts should be prescribed in the Bill. The amount of payments in respect of any particular parking offence will be prescribed by regulations made by the Minister under the Bill. This is an exact parallel of the existing system by which the Minister prescribes the amounts for the purpose of notices or tickets issued in respect of offences under section 103 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961. The reason why amounts were not prescribed in the Road Traffic Acts, and are not prescribed in this Bill, is that if they were so prescribed, they could not be changed without amending legislation. Changes can become necessary where the amount fixed for a particular offence is no longer seen to be an adequate deterrent.
The payment for illegal parking was increased by my predecessor from £1 to £2. This could not be done if it had been written into the Bill originally. It may be desirable to raise the current payment for a clearway offence. It is terrible that at present somebody can park a car on the clearway and leave it there. If the fine matched the offence this sort of thing would stop. Many of the traffic jams we have in this city are caused by people who park without thinking of anybody else but themselves.
It might become desirable to have higher amounts laid down for special areas, say, for illegal parking in a central city area where the offence would have a greater effect on traffic flow generally than it would in areas of less dense traffic. These are some of the reasons why I do not want to write into the Bill a figure which may have to be changed. Sometimes when we look at old laws we see ridiculous fines for pretty serious offences. They were big fines at the time but as the years go by they became smaller and smaller in relation to money value. Regulations made by the Minister under this Bill must, of course, as in all such cases, be laid before the Oireachtas and the House is thus given the right to challenge them.
The point was made by Deputy Hussey who questioned the giving of powers to town commissioners. It is only right that they should be given these powers since they are concerned with the traffic situation in a town and already have some statutory traffic functions. I do not suppose that they would operate the scheme normally but would get the county council to do it. Would anyone suggest that the town commissioners of Mullingar should not have the right to appoint traffic wardens if they so desire? I think that answers Deputy Hussey, but it was a good point. It is pointed out that if after consulting the gardaí they decided to operate the scheme themselves they would receive the proceeds of the payments but would have to dispose of them for the prescribed purposes such as road and traffic purposes. They could do this by arrangement with the county council.
Let us get back to the accepted use of wardens' powers. Some Deputies have got the picture of managers coercing wardens into being overzealous in their work in order to raise money. I doubt if they were very serious about this. Assuming that wardens exceeded themselves, the fact is that the person receiving the ticket can go to court. This is the best corrective to excessive zeal. If a warden went to court once and found that he was not being complimented too much he would not be inclined to go again. In any case the elected member of the local authority can always take up a case of over-zealousness in any local service with the manager.
Deputy Dowling went into detail on subsections (4) and (5) of section 3. These are in the exact terms of the 1961 Act provision which to date has not raised any problem. The Deputy was a little off-beam in this. Perhaps he did not look at the section carefully enough. Somebody remarked to me that some of the Deputies seemed to have read the leading article in The Irish Press last week rather than the Bill. Apparently the person who wrote the leading article did not have the Bill either.
Deputy Dowling also wanted to know what would happen a person served with a ticket for not displaying his tax disc and who had not, in fact, paid his tax. There are two offences involved, one, not displaying the tax disc and the second, not paying his tax. I would prefer to leave it to the good sense of the local authority and the Garda to work out the best arrangement of proceedings in such cases. Such an arrangement could proceed as follows: a ticket would be served for non-display; the Garda would be advised and if they found that the tax had not been paid they would then take proceedings, bringing the warden as a witness. I am sure Deputy Dowling does not underestimate the importancse to the general public of reducing evasion of motor taxation both in fairness to those who pay and for the services for which the tax is used. Every Deputy should be prepared to support this measure. We have the situation throughout the country where, for one reason or another, people are not taxing their motor vehicles.
Opposition Deputies asked if the Garda Representative Body and the existing traffic wardens were consulted before proceeding with the Bill. I could well ask the same question of Fianna Fáil in regard to their Bill. The answer in both cases is "no". I can also assure the House that I have received no representations against the Bill. Rather have I been pressed by local authorities to give them the power to engage wardens. Far from downgrading the gardaí the Bill removes from them much work. It enables them to be free for the work for which they were trained. The Conway Report, paragraph 11.86 says:
The traffic wardens system should be divorced entirely from the Garda Síochána and should be the responsibility of the local authorities.
This report was published in 1970. I have not heard of anybody objecting to it yet.
A few other small points arise. I was asked by one Deputy if a warden will have power to stop a vehicle. The answer is "no". I was asked why should a warden have powers to demand the name and address of an alleged offender as he has under section 4 of the Bill. This is an essential feature of the system. Existing traffic wardens have the same power under section 64 of the Road Traffic Act, 1968.
A number of Deputies raised the question of training wardens and this question will be taken up with the local authorities specifically. It will be their responsibility to ensure that the training is carried out with the co-operation of the gardaí. At present Dublin Corporation operate a training system in conjunction with the gardaí, the purpose of which is to acquaint the recruits with the bye-laws, temporary rules and regulations which they will enforce, the mechanics of notice issue and how to offer evidence in court. The need for impartiality and courtesy is constantly stressed. At the end of a week of preparation wardens are sent out on patrol, under supervision. The notices of issue are subjected to scrutiny to ensure that the instructions given in lectures have been assimilated. Refresher courses for wardens are also carried out by the corporation. I have no hesitation in saying that the wardens will be adequately trained by local authorities before they take up duty. Up to now, no complaints have been made to my Department against the warden system.
The question was also raised as to whether wardens would be entitled to be members of a trade union. Of course, they would. The existing members of the warden service in Dublin and Cork are members of a trade union. That answers the next question of whether they are adequately paid.
I spoke strongly against some of the sections of the Bill which was introduced when the wardens system was being set up. I spoke strongly against the idea that nobody except people who were prepared to work for a very low wage would be employed. The idea was that we could recruit from among ex-gardaí. I believe they should get adequate pension when they finish their service and should not take up jobs which are needed by other people. I am delighted with the arrangement here.
I notice the age limit is 35. I think that should be increased to 40 or 45. I do not believe that a person has finished his useful life when he reaches 35 years of age. These people should be employed. I am sure an excellent person would be employed even though he was older than the age specified by Dublin Corporation. There was no objection made by members of the corporation to the existing regulations and that is why they were left.
I do not know if Deputy Faulkner got a copy of the proposed amendments.
