Arrest warrant in district is 26 years outstanding

The longest outstanding arrest warrant issued by the courts in Louth/Cavan/Monaghan dates back to June 1, 1999.

The detail is included in a response received by the Labour Party's Alan Kelly who asked the Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan for the number of bench warrants currently outstanding in each Garda division approaching the end of last month.

He was assured by the minister that An Garda Síochána executes warrants as expeditiously as possible, giving priority to warrants relating to serious crimes.

Bench warrants do not expire and are only removed from the PULSE system when cancelled by the Court. Applications may be made by An Garda Síochána to the court to cancel bench warrants following consideration of a number of factors including: an error on the warrant, the death of the defendant, previous failed attempts to execute the warrant, the age of the warrant or evidence that there is now an inability to prosecute the substantive charge.

In Louth/Cavan/Monaghan there are a total of 2,500 outstanding bench warrants as of April 25, the sixth highest in the country.

Of that 2,144 (85.76%) are older than six months, with 1,898 issued by the courts more than year ago, and 935 pre-dating the year 2000.

The longest outstanding bench warrant issue date is recoded in the Dublin Metropolitan Region North Central (19/09/1971).