FPN issued to wrong address well after due date

Mohammar Szyslak

Just looking to see if anybody has any wisdom here regarding a fixed payment notice issued to me at the wrong address with the due date already long since expired.

It concerns an alleged breach of the health act (covid restrictions). The 'offence' for which the FPN was issued was very dubious to say the least but that's not what this discussion is about. It amounts to a €100 fine for being <500m from my house without a sufficient reason.

So at the time of the alleged offence I gave the Garda my address and confirmed to him, upon his asking, that I would be residing there for the foreseeable future. I also showed him my out-of-date provisional drivers license as ID. After an amicable discussion, he left it ambiguous as to whether I would be issued with the fine or not. I never received any FPN in the post in the following weeks however. I called into the public office of the local Garda station after some weeks to enquire as to whether I should have been issued the fine or not, just to make sure. The Garda at the desk said he couldn't find me in the system and so told me I was 'probably off the hook.' I also tried to get this confirmed in writing by emailing the station but was refused.

Lo and behold, almost five months after the offence, a letter in my name was received at my former address, my family home at which I no longer reside (I'm assuming the Garda got this address from my old driver's license). The date of the notice is as of the original date of the offence however and the due date, also printed on the notice, has already expired by over four months.

Does anybody have any insight into what I can expect to come of this? Any advice as to what I should do about it? Do I just wait for a summons and hope it gets thrown out while I get taken to the cleaners for solicitors fees?

There is more detail I can provide but this post is long enough as it is. Thanks.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Is the envelope post marked?

If so make sure to keep it as its evidence of when the fpn went through the postal system.

magicbastarder

500m? was there such a limit applied at any time?

Smee_Again

The FPN was issued the the correct address ie the address you provided to the Garda.

Your only issue is that it was received after the due date so focus on how to deal with that and ignore the fact you no longer live at that address.

magicbastarder

Smee_Again wrote: »

The FPN was issued the the correct address ie the address you provided to the Garda.

that's not explicitly stated, i think?
he says he gave the garda his address, and then states the FPN was sent to the address on his out of date provisional licence, so it seems it's a case of the garda having been given address A by the OP but writing down address B from the licence?

Smee_Again

Smee_Again wrote: »

The FPN was issued the the correct address ie the address you provided to the Garda.

Your only issue is that it was received after the due date so focus on how to deal with that and ignore the fact you no longer live at that address.

Go back and read the third paragraph, you missed something important.

Smee_Again

Yeah, you’re both right.

Claw Hammer

I think the o/p may have caused this by making enquiries.

Mohammar Szyslak

magicbastarder wrote: »

500m? was there such a limit applied at any time?

There was no limit, it was just a fineable offence to leave your house at all without an essential purpose. It was news to me at the time too.

The actual reason I was fined though was because the Gards had just a few days previously gotten some bad press from some twitter videos of large gatherings and arrests in the same area. At the time of the alleged offence however, there were no crowds at all, just me and a friend chatting on a bench in the evening time. The Gardaí were in plain clothes and a civilian car, it was a sting. There would continue to be groups of people sitting in the same spot everyday at lunch time socialising though, but they never got hassled obviously. It's all a bit of a farce.

In all of the Garda press stuff about the fines, as well as the wording of the act itself from what I can gather, it's emphasised that the fines are a last resort to be used only if people fail to comply with Garda directions. The Garda were supposed to use the four Es: Engage, Explain, Encourage and, only if necessary, Enforce. I was given no such opportunity to comply.

Claw Hammer wrote: »

I think the o/p may have caused this by making enquiries.

That crossed my mind as well, though there was a large gap in time between the email enquiry and the receipt of the FPN. In the email exchange I gave my name and DOB, the same information that was required of me upon my enquiry at the public office. The Garda responding to my query began to ask for a ton of extra detail about the incident. At that point I started to think it would be used against me or would be used to issue the fine which had not actually been issued in the first place and so I didn't agree to provide the information. The Garda then asked me two more times each time changing her mind and coming up with a different reason as to why she needed the info when I challenged her on it. I just stopped replying then. Maybe I pissed her off and she hunted down my case to issue the notice?


AFAIK the summons is issued automatically for failure to pay a FPN so hopefully the system ****s up and doesn't issue it until around six months from now and it'll be void.

wench

Mohammar Szyslak wrote: »

There was no limit, it was just a fineable offence to leave your house at all without an essential purpose.

You were always aloud to leave your house. The strictest limit was that you had to remain within 2Km of it without an essential purpose.

Mohammar Szyslak

wench wrote: »

You were always aloud to leave your house. The strictest limit was that you had to remain within 2Km of it without an essential purpose.

Nope, can't leave the house without an essential purpose according to them. One example of an essential purpose is excersise, which could be done within X kilometers of your home.

magicbastarder

just to be clear - 500m was *never* mentioned as a limit in law, essential or not.

GerardKeating

magicbastarder wrote: »

just to be clear - 500m was *never* mentioned as a limit in law, essential or not.

But the OP's address, as on "out-of-date provisional drivers license" provided as ID might have been more that 5km away.

magicbastarder

i'm not sure how that's relevant? the OP mentioned 500m, not 5km.

Mohammar Szyslak

magicbastarder wrote: »

just to be clear - 500m was *never* mentioned as a limit in law, essential or not.

No, I'm just saying that's how far I was from my house. The regulation was that movement of persons is prohibited within any distance without an essential purpose. The 2 or 5 km limits which everybody was so focused on in the lockdown discussions were actually only supposed to apply to excersise. It was a common misunderstanding.

athlone573

Mohammar Szyslak wrote: »

No, I'm just saying that's how far I was from my house. The regulation was that movement of persons is prohibited within any distance without an essential purpose. The 2 or 5 km limits which everybody was so focused on in the lockdown discussions were actually only supposed to apply to excersise. It was a common misunderstanding.

So what was your essential purpose in leaving the house?

Or are you just saying that you shouldn't have been picked on because lots of other people were doing it too?

My advice would be to wait and see if you get a summons, then explain yourself in court that you never got the FPN for months as the Garda made a mistake with the address. Be nice and the judge will go easier on you.

Mohammar Szyslak

athlone573 wrote: »

So what was your essential purpose in leaving the house?

Or are you just saying that you shouldn't have been picked on because lots of other people were doing it too?

If you go back to my first post I said the circumstances under which I was given the fine in the first place were not the point of my post. I only elaborated to clarify as it seemed to be confusing people.

athlone573 wrote: »

My advice would be to wait and see if you get a summons, then explain yourself in court that you never got the FPN for months as the Garda made a mistake with the address. Be nice and the judge will go easier on you.

Yeah, that's fair, that's probably all I can do. I was just hoping somebody could provide some insight as to whether the errors in the issue of the FPN might void the case or indeed if somebody could advise me of options other than court that I might have to deal with this since I was denied the opportunity to pay the €100 fine and will now have to fork out god knows how much on solicitors fees as well as face a possible conviction.

While were here, does anybody know if a conviction in this regard would affect my chances of obtaining visas? That'd be my career pretty much ****ed.

athlone573

You're obviously worried about it so theres no point me telling you not to worry it'll be grand

I'm not sure how these cases play out in court, you might get free legal aid, you might be better off just paying the fine, but don't listen to me.

Mohammar Szyslak

athlone573 wrote: »

I'm not sure how these cases play out in court, you might get free legal aid, you might be better off just paying the fine, but don't listen to me.

I don't have the opportunity to pay the fine. The garda website says there are absolutely no exceptions for paying an overdue fine. Not a hope of me getting free legal aid for such a minor offence either.

Thanks anyway!

seamus

If visas are a concern, then a solicitor is worth the money. They will arrange to avoid a legal conviction, you'll pay a relatively small fine and walk away.

Turn up, try to make excuses for why you shouldn't have been fined, claim that you were hard done by and the judge might be in a bad mood.

Reality is, you provided the Garda with a proof of address (driving licence). That you claimed to live elsewhere is irrelevant; you had no proof of that. And without proof that the FPN was issued after the due date, you're stuck.

So from the court's point of view, you did receive the FPN (thus, the address was valid) and you just didn't pay it. You want a solicitor to help you frame your defence in a way that doesn't sound like, "I'm being stitched up".