Almost €22,000 paid to charities in Tipperary from the court poor box in 2023

Payments made to charities in Tipperary from the court poor box totalled €21,950 last year. 

That is according to new figures released by the Courts Service of Ireland. The figures are divided into two districts, Nenagh/Thurles and Clonmel. 

Clonmel had by far the most amount of money paid out with €21,750 going to charities and individuals. 

€16,950 was paid out to charities, including Suir Dragon Paddlers, Cuan Soar Women’s Refuge and Tipperary Rape Crisis. 

Other charities to benefit were Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind, Kilnaspic Women’s Shed, Owning Development Company, South Kilkenny Music Preservation Society and Waterford and Tipperary Community Youth Services. A further €5,400 was paid out to individuals. 

In Nenagh/Thurles, just €200 was paid, and that was to Pieta Mid-West. 

WHAT IS THE POOR BOX?

The court poor box is a common law practice where a judge can direct a defendant to pay a sum of money to the court which is then distributed for some sort of social good. 

The judge decides where the money goes and that is usually to a charity.

Alternatively, a judge can order the defendant to pay the money directly to the charity. 

The judge can also order that medical reports be paid for with funds from the poor box. 

Payment to the court poor box is used to impose a punishment or order reparation where the offence is minor or the person may not have previous convictions. 

Examples might be for breaches of the peace, intoxicated in a public place or another public order offence. 

The system is usually used in place of a conviction and is usually used by the District Court.

A spokesperson for the court service said: 

“When combined with the Probation of Offenders Act, it provides an option where a person is held accountable in public court, some financial penalty is considered merited but a conviction and fine are not.

“It can sometimes be a more meaningful punishment than the maximum fine where the value of a maximum fine may have been eroded by inflation.”

According to the new figures, €1,052,853 was paid out to charities across the country in 2023 from the court poor box. 

IS IT A GOOD THING?

It would appear so, but not everyone agrees, and there have been plans by the government for some time to replace the court poor box. 

In 2005 the Law Reform Commission, a statutory body responsible for keeping laws under review, recommended replacing the practice with a more standardised system as part of a review of the Probation Act.

They identified a number of “positives and negatives” to the practice. 

According to the authors of the report, the court’s poor box means that defendants are punished in a way that is proportionate to the crime.

The funds can be used for social or community good, in line with principles of restorative justice. 

Judges can take a person’s means into account when imposing a financial penalty. 

But, the report also said there is no standard administration for the court poor box which means it is used differently from court to court. 

Some judges, they found, used it in conjunction with a conviction or to “top-up” a fine. 

They said there is a perception that the court poor box is a way of “buying” one’s way out of a conviction and that the Public Accounts Committee had expressed concerns about diverting funds away from the Exchequer that otherwise would be collected as fines. 

It should be noted that the report was published before Fixed Penalty legislation was enacted. 

In 2014, the government published the Criminal Justice (Community Sanctions) Bill which would replace the court poor box and update the Probation of Offenders Act 1907.

But, as of July 2023, the bill had not gone through the houses of the Oireachtas.

In answer to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin’s Justice spokesperson Pa Daly, last year, Minister Helen McEntee said she expects to bring a revised general scheme before government shortly.