Non appearance in court

the magician

Have a question here about something from a few years ago.

A guard turned up at my house sometime in 2006 I think it was. Said he had a small fine for me(130 i think). No big deal made by him( He kinda knew my father so didn't make a fuss).But he never fully explained what it was. I just paid it and that was the end of it.

It stemmed from an unpaid parking ticket around 2004.
Unbeknownst to me I got a parking ticket .(was never on my windscreen or blew away , not really sure). As I was unaware of it ,I never paid the original ticket.

Just so happens It was at the same time as I moved house and through a bit of a mess up Im pretty sure follow up tickets and the court summons was issued to my old address and I wasn't getting my forwarded mail.

From the quick glance at the piece of paper the guard had in his hand that day, I could see I had been convicted in my absence.(I'm guessing it was actually a bench warrant he had?)

Anyway what I'm here wondering is what exactly does this mean as I never really looked into the ramifications of this. I assume it doesn't mean a whole lot but does mean I have a conviction on my record.

Never caused me a problem but it has been bugging me for a while if this can cause me any potential problems?

Thanks for looking

coylemj

You forgot to pay a parking ticket and were fined in court. By any standards it is the most insignificant conviction imaginable so you have nothing to worry about.

Face the camera, take that smile off your face please.....

the magician

Thanks
I was fairly sure it was insignificant , was never particularly worried about it.Just kinda always bugged me that it wasn't explained at the time.

It's an annoyance also that for whatever reason I never got the original ticket on the day it happened and the people in the apartment after us were throwing out any remaining mail that was being sent to us there.

MagicSean

If you were convicted in your absence it's likely to be a penal warrant, not a bench. It means you can pay the fine or be lodged in prison.

the magician

MagicSean wrote: »

If you were convicted in your absence it's likely to be a penal warrant, not a bench. It means you can pay the fine or be lodged in prison.

That makes sense, (I didn't know what the types of warrant were) from what I remember , think it said €130 fine or 5 days in Mountjoy.

coylemj

I wasn't going to go into that level of detail but a bench warrant is a warrant to arrest someone for the purposes of getting him in front of a judge to answer a charge, typically after he's skipped bail. it's not connected with the collection of a fine. A penal warrant tells the Gardai to go to someone and collect a fine and in default, lodge him in a named prison (depends on where you live) for xxx days or months imprisonment.