Speeding Fine Question

I wonder why it took so long for the fine to arrive, 4 months ? i would look onto it.
Thought same that it was €80 plus 3 points ?

TPMP wrote: »

That's what we thought too. It would mean we would have missed two previous notifications (which never came). This summons came today by registered post but it was just sitting in our letter box. Nobody signed for it.

I say that's why it double with the two different notifications going unreplied,
but as you say you didn't get them so you couldn't reply,
does your wife recall the date and time of incident, was she on this road at this time ?

TPMP wrote: »

Yes, she remembers the incident and was expecting this fine(albeit a few months ago). But this nonsense of 160 quid and a court summons is rubbish. We never received the first two notifications. Is there any way of proving this?

Well you never sign for the latest summons it was just posted,
so the one before wasn't sign for by you either, so they cant prove you received it, all you can do is go to court and explain,
hopefully should see it your way.

You have received the new "Section 44 notice" (the so-called 3rd payment option) and a court summons, this is when the original fine doubles for failure to pay within 56 days.

Weather you received the original FCPN or not is irrelevant, the whole point of the 3rd payment option is to remove the "I didn't receive the FCPN" excuse. You can pay the doubled fine upto 7 days before court appearance or take your chances in court, but the defence of I didn't get the FCPN is no longer allowed.

TPMP wrote: »

But how is it no longer allowed if we genuinely didn't get them? I mean surely there must be a way where we can prove this?

The 3rd payment option was brought in to stop the I didn't get the notice excuse, the whole point of it is you can't say I didn't get it, weather genuine or not you can't use the excuse, there is a statutory presumption that you received the FCPN.

Also I think you need to understand the point of an FCPN/Section 44 notice, all they are for realistically is to give you a chance to pay a penalty rather than face the chances of a criminal conviction and double points, you are still afforded that choice now with the Section 44, the whole point of the I didn't get it excuse was people claimed they were denied the choice of fine vs conviction and so the case would be struck out (assuming the judge believed you of course). You still have that choice now, if it goes to court the issue is not weather or not you got the FCPN, it's basically the matter of guilty or not guilty - which equates to either no penalty or a higher fine, double points and a criminal conviction.

Peregrinus wrote: »

But the fine is for speeding, and she's not innocent of speeding.

I get that you missed out on the opportunity to pay a lower fine earlier on. That's unfortunate. But the fine being levied now is not a fine for missing out on the earlier notices; it's a fine for speeding.

It appears to be the original speeding fine of 80 euro plus an additional fine of 80 euro for not paying the speeding fine on time! What the OP appears to be innocent of is the second offence of not paying on time.

You have received the new "Section 44 notice" (the so-called 3rd payment option) and a court summons, this is when the original fine doubles for failure to pay within 56 days.

Weather you received the original FCPN or not is irrelevant, the whole point of the 3rd payment option is to remove the "I didn't receive the FCPN" excuse. You can pay the doubled fine upto 7 days before court appearance or take your chances in court, but the defence of I didn't get the FCPN is no longer allowed.

Given that the OP states he didn't sign for the registered letter, isn't the option of the "I didn't receive the FCPN" still there? Granted in this case it would be lying, however if the OP didn't sign for the letter, for whatever reason didn't open it, wouldn't the "I didn't receive it" defense still be valid? Presumably the case would go to court, he would be tried and convicted in his absence and would then have to appeal. Without a signature record for the notice his defense would appear quite strong.

So in order to solve an issue of people stating that they didn't receive either of 2 fixed penalty notices in the post, they added a third fixed penalty notice which is also sent by post and then removed all rights for the citizen to use this is a reason for not having paid the fine ?

Maybe i'm missing something incredibly obvious here but could all this not have been resolved by sending the initial fine by registered post and having it signed for

The problem with sending penalty notices by registered post is that people who have reason to expect penalty notices can decline to sign for any registered post that arrives and then say (truthfully) that they never received a penalty notice.

So you have this two-step system; first of all an unregistered notice which is hard to avoid and which most people pay when they get it and then, for those who don't, a registered notice whose delivery can (usually) be proven. The penalty is higher for the second notice in order to give people an incentive to pay the first notice, rather than putting the matter off.

It is unfortunate, obviously, that if you genuinely don't receive the first notice you face the higher penalty. But if you could avoid this by saying that you never got the first notice then experience suggests that everybody would say that, and the incentive effect of offering a reduced penalty on the first notice would disappear. Logic suggests that if the incentive effect of a reduced penalty on the first notice were to disappear, there'd be no reason to offer a reduced penalty and, in due course, they'd stop doing so, which would mean that everybody would end up paying the higher penalty. So we currently have an imperfect system under which the majority of people do in fact get a lower penalty, and the state saves the cost of a lot of registered post. You could treat everybody equally by cutting out the first step entirely - going straight to the registered notice and the higher penalty for all.

Exact same situation here. Fine double to 160 euro and got summonsed because the FCPN didnt arrive in the post.

They maintain that they have proof of postage of the initial FCPN, but they will not release that until court.

They really need to firstly issue these by Registered Post. If this doesnt happen, then via a Garda.

It's bizarre. How are you supposed to prove you didn't receive the notice in the post?

seagull wrote: »

It's bizarre. How are you supposed to prove you didn't receive the notice in the post?

The problem is so many people said they didn't get it and were getting off, whilst some may not have got them at one stage it seemed the postal service had failed nearly everyone in the state who were up in couet, ans that's the whole point of the Section 44 notice.

The main point of a FCPN is to avoid a criminal conviction, you still get that choice now when summoned albeit with a higher monetary penalty.

Yeah, it would appear Kinsella and Brown have dealt with this fairly comprehensively already!