Thousands escape penalty points

IRISH MOTORISTS responsible for more than 85,000 penalty-point offences have escaped having the points registered on their record as they did not bring their driving licence to court.

The Department of Transport said that for 85,709 offences the Irish driving licence holder “did not have any driving licence particulars in court, or they were not available for recording following court proceedings”.

As a result, these penalty points could not be added to the drivers’ records on the National Vehicle Driver File.

The issue stems from a weakness in the wording of the Road Traffic Act (2002) which requires a motorist to bring their licence to court or face a fine of €800.

However, the department said yesterday that “this issue has been addressed by the Road Traffic Act (2010) which will come into force later this year”.

The new legislation will allow the National Vehicle Driver File to create a penalty-point record for a foreign licence and provides for the mandatory production of a driver’s licence and a copy of their licence in court.

Under the new legislation, penalty points “will now be formally designated as entries to the National Vehicle Driver File, and consequently it should be possible in many cases to associate them with the records of the holders of Irish driving licences, where it is possible to establish a link,” a department spokeswoman said.

She added that currently the “key to recording points on a driving licence record is the licence number of the motorist”.

The failure to impose penalty points on Irish licence holders who do not bring their licence to court is part of the reason why a third of all penalty points issued are not allocated.

This is the first time details of this cohort of drivers have been released.

Of the almost 850,000 penalty-point offences recorded as of June this year, a third, or 285,698, were not allocated to a driver. In most cases this was because the offender either held a “foreign driving licence”, had a vehicle registered in another country, or did not bring their licence to court.

The spokeswoman added that approximately “70 per cent of penalty-point records can be matched against records on the National Vehicle Driver File”. She said the remaining 30 per cent was comprised of foreign drivers and those who did not bring their licence to court.

A spokeswoman denied the failure to allocate a third of all penalty points was due to weaknesses in the quality of the data held by the National Vehicle Driver File.

She said that while there was no documented audit of its accuracy, the department “was satisfied that the data on both the driver and vehicle records is accurate and fit for purpose”.