ALMOST 37,000 bench warrants for the arrest of offenders have not been enforced, an increase of 4,000 in the past seven months, the Dáil has heard.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said that 36,972 warrants remained to be executed, but he stressed that "the vast majority of the outstanding bench warrants relate to unpaid fines for minor infractions of the law".

Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan said it was a "most serious problem and it is getting worse". Mr Flanagan said there were 33,000 outstanding warrants in May so the initiative in August by gardaí in the Dublin metropolitan area was a "failure".

But the Minister said that in the "August blitz" 808 bench warrants, 549 penal warrants and 55 distress warrants were executed. The Garda authorities had introduced special measures in Dublin region resulting in a 17 per cent increase in warrants executed between January and August, compared to the same time last year.

Mr Ahern will introduce the Fines Bill early in the new year, but Mr Flanagan said "we can't wait for the Minister's new fines legislation, which may not be enacted by this time next year. How can the Minister stand over the unedifying spectacle in Limerick, where a well-known leading gang member has turned himself into the Garda station for his own protection although a bench warrant has not been executed? How can the Minister stand over the case of another famous and tragic murder, that of Donna Cleary, where the person responsible had two bench warrants?"

The Minister stressed that gardaí prioritised "bench warrants relating to the arrest of people for serious and general crime. As a result of resource constrictions, they do not tend to concentrate on financial warrants, or distress warrants."