Gardaí will soon be able to check whether people they are looking for are in prison for other crimes, Judge William Hamill said yesterday.
Speaking at one of his regular "warrant courts", the judge said that, by autumn, the Garda will have the facility to check whether a person being sought is in fact in custody for some other offence by using their own Pulse computer system.
Judge Hamill holds special courts to deal with the backlog of arrest warrants arising out of people failing to turn up in court or not paying fines which carry a default penalty of prison.
One of the problems with the system has been, however, that there has been no overall control to ensure these warrants are enforced.
The lack of enforcement often led to situations where warrants several years old can be outstanding against people who may have completed prison terms for other offences.
It means that a person fined, for instance, on a driving charge and later jailed for a more serious offence, can still have the warrant ordering his imprisonment in default of not paying the fine hanging over him when released - when it should have been taken as part of the time he has already served.
In an effort to deal with the problem, Judge Hamill sits regularly so that gardaí involved in cases where warrants are outstanding can formally verify the most up-to-date position. They are either quashed or re-issued.
At his court yesterday, the judge told gardaí that one of the regular difficulties in enforcing warrants - having to check if a person is in prison and which prison they are in - will soon be ended at the touch of a button.
"You'll be able to check it by entering a number on the station PC," he said.