Two years ago a motorist was detected driving at 202km/h on the M6 motorway between Dublin and Galway.
But he escaped a mandatory ban for driving. Why? It was down to money.
A charge of dangerous driving against him was reduced to careless driving because he made a €20,000 donation to a charity supporting disabled football players.
When the 44-year-old man appeared before District Court Judge Andrew Cody in 2023 on a charge of dangerous driving, he indicated, in response to the judge, he was willing to make a donation to charity.
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Judge Cody said, unless the man paid €20,000, he would be facing a three-year ban and a significant suspended sentence.
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He was told the man was earning €36,000 annually and would struggle to pay €20,000 but could get a loan for €10,000.
The judge, whose District Court area includes Laois and Offaly, said €20,000 would have to be paid by June 1st 2023, saying the speed he was travelling was “astronomical” and there must be a “significant and painful” deterrent.
The money, the judge said, would be paid to the Midlands United Powerchair Football Club which had three players with disabilities representing Ireland at the world cup in Sydney in October 2023.
The club had met the judge recently and asked for assistance with funds from the court poor box to pay for the trip, the judge added.
Judges in the District Court, the lowest in the court system, have the authority to order a defendant to make a donation in the court poor box in lieu of a conviction for certain offences.
The system is not founded in legislation but has evolved from the judge’s common law jurisdiction to exercise their discretion in imposing penalties.
[ Courts still allowing drivers to avoid penalty pointsOpens in new window ]
However, the High Court ruled in 2014 that a law making penalty points mandatory superseded the District Court’s common law jurisdiction to allow poor box donations instead of convictions.
Regardless, charitable donations to the poor box are still being used in the courts in cases where mandatory bans should usually apply.
Another motorist who was caught driving at 212km/h on the M7 motorway between Naas, Co Kildare and Limerick in August avoided the minimum two-year mandatory driving ban after being given an opportunity to make a charitable donation.
The man was convicted of careless driving, fined €300 and given a six-month driving ban after Judge Cody was told in September last that the 26-year-old had a receipt confirming he had donated €10,000 to the Jack and Jill Foundation.
In several other cases before the judge, he reduced dangerous driving charges to ones of careless driving after payment of donations to charity.
In July 2025, a 22-year-old woman who admitted speeding at 181km/h on the M7 motorway in Laois at 11.30am on a date in May 2025 also avoided a ban.
The woman’s solicitor said she had no previous convictions and had €3,000 in court in the hope of avoiding the loss of her licence by making a donation.
Judge Cody said, while it was a “huge speed”, he would reduce her dangerous driving charge to careless driving on condition she paid a €5,000 donation to North Tipperary Hospice. The woman was convicted of careless driving, with no disqualification.
Legal sources say a very small number of District Court judges are willing to reduce dangerous driving charges to careless driving in such circumstances.
In September 2017, two men caught doing doughnuts in their cars following a Garda investigation into boy racing at the Rally of the Lakes in Killarney were ordered by Judge James O’Connor to pay €3,500 each to the court poor box.
After the men, aged in their 20s, pleaded guilty at the District Court in Killarney to substituted charges of careless driving, Judge O’Connor ordered them to pay €3,500 each and to install devices in their vehicles limiting their speed to a maximum of 100km/h.
Professor Tom O’Malley, a barrister and associate professor of law at the University of Galway as well as an author of the first Irish textbook on sentencing, published last March, said the law relating to dangerous and careless driving is “clear”.
Section 53 of the Road Traffic Act 1961, concerning dangerous driving, makes it “an offence to drive a vehicle in a public place at a speed or in a manner ... dangerous to the public”.
Penalties can include fines and imprisonment, depending on the seriousness of the offence, but a first offence carries a mandatory two-year driving ban.
Careless driving, covered by Section 52 of the same Act, involves driving “without due care and attention”. Penalties can include a fine of up to €5,000 and, if no disqualification is imposed, five penalty points. Unlike Section 53, it gives a judge discretion not to impose a driving ban for a first offence.
In deciding whether to reduce a dangerous driving charge to one of careless driving, a judge has to adjudicate on the facts, Mr O’Malley said.
A charitable donation offer is not relevant to the judge’s consideration, he said.
If a judge believes dangerous driving has been made out on the evidence, a conviction on that charge should follow, he said.
Seeking a charitable donation to reduce a dangerous driving charge also “runs counter to the whole idea of impartial justice for everyone”, he said.
Any such practice would have to have regard to the means of each particular offender but, in his view, it “should not be happening at all”.
This week, the Courts Service provided data showing 480 penalty point road traffic offences were struck out between January 2022 and September 2025, benefiting 459 drivers.
Those included speeding and other charges such as having no insurance and holding a mobile phone while driving.
In the wake of that data, the president of the District Court, Judge Paul Kelly, again circulated his judicial colleagues with the 2014 High Court ruling finding that the mandatory penalty points law superseded a District Court judge’s jurisdiction to accept poor box donations in lieu of convictions.
At Tullamore District Court in October 2022, Judge Patricia Cronin referred to that decision when saying she could not accept a donation to charity in a case where a conviction would result in penalty points.
That case concerned a 78-year-old man who admitted driving at 83km/h in a 50km/h zone in Tullamore at 12.14pm on August 11th 2021. His solicitor said his client had no previous convictions and the vehicle was available to him, his son and four of their employees.
His client was unable to establish whether anyone else would have been driving the vehicle on that date but was relatively sure it could not have been him, the solicitor said.
When asked by the solicitor whether the court would accept €250 as a charitable donation, Judge Cronin said she could not because of a judicial review in relation to penalty point offences.
Imposing a €160 fine, she said her hands “are tied”.
Last year, €1.67 million was paid to charities from the courts’ poor boxes nationwide, including donations for offences to which penalty points do not apply.
Last June, Judge Cody announced €301,000 donations were made from his district’s poor box and seized criminal assets in 2024, the largest in the country, with more than 150 charities including many sports groups receiving support.
The total included €104,000 seized in cash through police property applications; €150,000 from first-time drug offenders fined during the 2024 Electric Picnic; and €47,000 in other poor box payments. The funds were distributed by a committee comprising judges, gardaí, court officials and local solicitors.
Separately, the DPP has brought a judicial review challenge over Judge Cody’s refusal to convict more than 30 drivers of alleged speeding on a road in Co Kildare.
The judge refused to convict after claiming GoSafe speed detector vans had targeted an “unjust speed zone” on the road at Clogheen, Monasterevin and were “shooting fish in a barrel”.
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