Speeding - summons

Gone Fishin

Hi there,

I was stopped for speeding on the 22/10/2008 and I never received the ticket for it. I thought nothing of it, if it had come in, I would have paid it and took it on the chin. Last thursday evening (08/10/2009), the summons was dropped into my house at 11.50pm. I called the Garda and left a message and he called me. He said that the system is automated and he has nothing to do with it once it is inputted.

Is there a time frame involved for issuing a summons, the offence took place nearly a year ago. Also if the system is automated, why was it delivered by hand to my house and not sent out in the post as normal?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Stainless_Steel

That sounds very strange.

The usual procedure would be to issue you with a fixed penalty notice for speeding, allowing you to pay the fine and accept your 2 penaly points. Then the issue is closed.

A summons is issued if you dont pay the fine, is it possible you moved house shortly after being caught speeding? Or any other reason why you wouldnt receive the fixed penalty notice? Address mis-spelt on your licence?

Gone Fishin

If the ticket had come in, I would gladly have paid it. There was no mistake about addresses either on the summons or on my license. It just never arrived. Why would the garda deliver it to my house by hand? Its weird that it never arrived by post and he delivers the summons to me in person. Could it be something wrong on the system and the Garda realised this and delivered it by hand to ensure it got to me? Plus this means now that when I go to court they are going to hammer me for non payment.

Reloc8

Time frame for issue of a summons in this case is that the application has to be made within 6 months of the date of the offence (look at the bit that says 'whereas complaint was made on the blank day of blank that you the said etc.). That's the only relevant statutory limit.

There's no prescribed limit for the summons to be served - so yep you can get one a year or more after an incident. The only relevant date is the one above, although if you went say 2 years after the incident before you got the summons you'd probably have some chance of getting it struck out, for a summary offence of a very trivial nature. The delay in this case is not unusual.

Summons are often delivered by hand, nothing unusual here either.

When a speeding offence goes to court the main difference between that and paying the notice is that on conviction the penalty points applied are 4 and not 2. The court has no say in this, they follow automatically. Although in theory the max fine goes up to €800 for a first offence, this is not going to be a realistic possibility unless a person was going at a ridiculous clip, in which case you'd probably be done also for a more substantive driving offence and that would be your main worry.

As to whether your particular circumstances constitute a defence to the summons (based on non receipt of the notice) you'd be best off to talk to a decent solicitor.