‘Significant increase’ in number of uninsured vehicles

The failure of motor insurers to create a reliable customer database is stopping gardaí from checking motorists’ insurance status in real time, it has been claimed.

Earlier this month the 2016 Road Traffic Bill was passed by the Oireachtas and among its provisions are measures aimed at tackling the increasing number of uninsured drivers in the Republic.

A recent report from the Motor Insurers' Bureau of Ireland (MIBI) said there were 150,000 uninsured drivers on Irish roads.

It described a “significant increase” in the estimated number of uninsured private vehicles, with the figure growing by more than 32,000 this year and climbing by 85 per cent compared to this time five years ago.

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The Bill addresses this problem by promoting the use of the Garda’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system, which was rolled out three years ago at a cost of €6 million.

Unreliable data

However it relies on information provided by the insurance industry in connection with insured drivers.

This data set has proved to be unreliable – industry sources said the unwillingness of motor insurers to take responsibility for the provision of clean data had gardaí “tearing their hair out in frustration”.

The new Bill provides for detailed information that the insurance industry must now provide to address this issue. "This is a very vital provision which will allow for the establishment of the Insured and Uninsured Database by Insurance Ireland and MIBI, which will provide reliable data to An Garda Síochána to enable them to detect uninsured drivers and take them off our roads," the Department of Transport said.

Dragging its heels

While the bill has been welcomed by the Automobile Association, which itself sells motor insurance, its spokesman Conor Faughnan said it was only a first step. "It is fair to say the insurance industry in Ireland has been dragging its heels on this. It has already put together a clean database in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain. And remember a lot of the time we are talking about exactly the same companies here and yet they seem incapable of doing it here."

Mr Faugnan said a database “of sorts” detailing all insured drivers did exist in the Republic but he said it was “so riddled with errors that when gardaí tried to use it, it was giving false reports in about 20 per cent of cases so it was completely unusable.”

He said that it was “one thing to compel the insurance companies to provide this data” which is what the new legislation does. “But it is another thing to make sure the data base is correctly populated in a timely way. We need all of the insurance companies to be punished if they fail to populate the database correctly and somebody needs to take ownership to stop the squabbling between various parties.”