Difficulties in the collection of fines by local council regional committees for the year 2015 has resulted in the provision of €3.7 million in collectable fines ready to be written off as ‘doubtful’ debts. Regional committees are therefore prepared not to recover the millions owed to them in collectable fines.
This information came to light by a report penned by the National Audit Office which looked into the workings of local government for 2015. The regional committees in question refer to central, south eastern and southern ones.
“As at 31 December 2015, total receivables by the three regional committees which had submitted the audited financial statements, aggregated to €7,921,848, of which €3,772,359 was provided for,” reads the report.
Regional committees “are to set up a proper system to collect unpaid contraventions without undue delays”.
Budget constraints are often cited by local councils as reasons for why certain roads do not get fixed or certain projects do not get off the ground, therefore it would seem that correcting shortcomings in the fine collection process would begin to address this issue.
The report, with reference to the Local Enforcement System (LES) in general reads:
“Outstanding fines should not take longer than one year to be settled, as these are usually payable upon the renewal of the respective motor vehicle license. However, for an unknown reason, this is not materialising, with the consequence that it has a negative impact on all local councils, since substantial amounts are still being recorded as outstanding. Guided by the principle of the prudence concept, councils have already adequately reduced, by way of a provision, those amounts where recoverability is deemed remote.”
In addition to councils having to make provisions for what they predict to be bad debts, reports generated by the official LES have been labelled unreliable, meaning that decisions cannot be taken based on the documentation available on contraventions from the online system:
“Reports generated from the computerised system, with respect to tribunal pending payments in relation to the pre-regional period, again illustrated substantial movements when compared to the amounts reported in the preceding year.
“Instances were further noted whereby a particular LES report indicated that during the year under review, the council received more cash than that shown by other reports generated from the same LES computerised system. LES receivables as recognised in the books of account and respective balances recorded in the reports extracted from the local enforcement IT system also differed.
“Some inconsistencies question the integrity of the system and the reliability of the data generated there from, especially when these were not substantiated by plausible explanations.”
With regard to the cancellation and the waiver of contraventions, the report called for “stricter controls” on the way in which contraventions are cancelled. This is due to the “risks inherent in the current procedure for the cancellation of contraventions”, opening up room for “potential abuse”.
In addition to this, it also called for the petition process for contraventions “to be monitored to ensure that appealed contraventions are only waived for valid reasons and/or humanitarian grounds.”
Continued shortcomings in the recording and collecting of contravention payments is sure to discourage citizens from paying their fines in line with the law.