The Minister for Justice has said “next steps” are being considered to address the use of the poor box in District Courts.
Use of the poor box has come under the spotlight after it emerged some motorists were permitted to avail of it to avoid penalty points and/or driving bans.
This was despite a 2014 High Court ruling that a law making penalty points mandatory superseded the District Court’s common law jurisdiction to allow poor box donations in lieu of convictions for such offences.
Courts Service data showed 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.
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A small number of drivers avoided a two-year mandatory driving ban after making charitable donations, including two separately detected driving at speeds of more than 200km/h on a motorway.
Both had their dangerous driving charges reduced to careless driving by Judge Andrew Cody, whose district includes Laois and Offaly. One driver made a €10,000 charitable donation; the second paid €20,000.
In a parliamentary question this week, Sinn Féin Justice spokesman Matt Carthy TD asked the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, what steps he intends to take regarding the “continued use by some District Courts of charity donations to allow motorists to avoid convictions for penalty point offences, including in cases of those driving at speeds significantly in excess of speed limits”.
In a written response, the Minister said “the judiciary are, subject only to the Constitution and the law, independent in the exercise of their judicial functions”.
In relation to next steps to address use of the poor box, he said the Criminal Justice (Community Sanctions) Bill 2014 will “facilitate the effective and efficient use of community sanctions” by the courts and ensure the courts have “a wide range of appropriate options for dealing with people who have committed minor offences”.
The general scheme of the Bill provides for abolition of the poor box and the establishment of a reparation fund and reparation orders as a form of non-custodial sentence, he said. “This is to provide for a fair, equitable and transparent system of reparation, applicable only to minor offences and for the usage of that fund to provide services for the victims of crime.”
A policy review by his department of the scheme of the Bill recommends that changes reflect developments in Irish penal policy since 2014, the Minister said. “My department is currently considering the policy review and next steps are being considered.”
In a separate parliamentary question, Fine Gael TD Michael Murphy, chair of the Oireachtas Transport Committee, sought the names of those charities which had benefited from poor box donations in penalty point offence cases each year since 2022.
In his response, the Minister said the poor box is a non-statutory system used by the District Court judges to impose a financial charge on a defendant to be used for a charitable purpose, usually instead of imposing a criminal conviction.
The option of paying into the poor box arises usually where the offence is minor in nature and would not attract a custodial sentence, he said. The Courts Service publishes annual reports on the poor box but had advised it was not possible to provide a report of payments to charities relating to specific offences/categories of offence, with the effect it was not possible to provide a report relating to poor box payments in respect of penalty point offences only, he said.
Payments to the poor box were accounted for by the relevant court office and the accounting procedures are subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Charities are generally the recipients of poor box contributions but the decision is solely at the discretion of the judge, who is independent in sentencing, as in other matters concerning the exercise of judicial functions, he said.
