A person may not generally be \u00a0arrested or committed to prison for failure to pay a debt.\u00a0 This policy was reflected in the Debtors Act, Ireland 1872 and in the Enforcement of Courts Orders Legislation.<\/p>\n
Committal to prison is permitted under the Debtors (Ireland) Act for wilful disobedience of certain court orders which are within the capacity of the person to perform.\u00a0 A court may commit a person to prison up to six weeks under the 1872 Act or until he payment of the sum due if \u00a0he makes default in the payment of the debt or installment of a debt, pursuant of any order or judgment of a competent court. The Act applies to orders made in open court. It appears to be limited to High Court orders. There is a discretion to refuse to make an order.<\/p>\n
It must be shown to the satisfaction of the court that the person has the means (or had the means since the court order) to pay the sum concerned and has refused or neglected to do so.\u00a0 The order may be made in respect of non-payment of the sum the subject of the order or an instalment.<\/p>\n
The procedure is subject to the same Constitutional considerations that apply to the Enforcement of Court Orders Acts. It is likely that the revised due process requirements under that legislation would be required the case of this jurisdiction.\u00a0 Questions may arise in relation to constitutionality.\u00a0 The person is likely to be entitled to the opportunity to make representations and be represented.<\/p>\n
Copies of the order are delivered to the Garda Commissioner with details of the person against whom it is to be executed.\u00a0 The person may be arrested and copies of the order are endorsed by the executing officer with the date of arrest and are left with the governor of the prison concerned.<\/p>\n
Imprisonment does not extinguish the debt or deprive the person enforcing it of any other remedy. The plaintiff may apply for and pursue such other remedies, as he sees fit contemporaneously or otherwise. Imprisonment is discharged on payment of the debt.<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overview Committal to prison can take place where there is deliberate refusal to obey a court order. This is not generally a punishment in the sense that imprisonment for crime is for a particular sentence for a crime that has occurred. Committal for disobedience lasts only for so long as the person deliberately refuses to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[326],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21412,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368\/revisions\/21412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}