More than 1,000,000 checks on vehicles were carried out by the Garda in the first three months of this year, a road safety seminar will be told on Friday.
The checks, which reveal the vehicle’s insurance, motor tax and roadworthiness, can be carried out by gardaí using hand-held or in-car technology, while not necessarily stopping traffic.
The seminar, organised by Insurance Ireland and the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland, enables representatives from insurance, policing, and the Road Safety Authority examine how they can develop further data-sharing to strengthen enforcement and improve road safety.
Deputy Garda Commissioner Shawna Coxon will tell the seminar that the review of 1,072,349 vehicles represents a 15 per cent increase on the number of inspections in the first three months of 2026.
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Coxon is expected to outline how gardaí detected and detained 5,028 vehicles for breaches of insurance legislation in that time period.
In recent years, the force has rolled out active mobility apps across the force, enabling members to have real-time, at-scene access to critical information regardless of their location. The use of apps also allows members to complete road safety checks with access to vehicle and driver information from the Department of Transport, Motor Insurance Bureau and Garda Pulse system.
The discussions will also include the potential introduction of continuous vehicle coverage, a system which requires insurance to be tied to vehicle ownership, as opposed to the current situation where an offence only occurs if an uninsured driver is caught driving a vehicle on Irish roads.
The seminar comes as Susan Gray, founder of road safety campaign group Parc, said she was hopeful a loophole allowing many drivers convicted in court to avoid penalty points could be closed.
Gray, who, along with Fine Gael TD Emer Currie, met officials from the Courts Service and the Department of Justice in recent weeks, said errant drivers were avoiding penalty points simply by not producing their driving licences in court. Without the licence physically produced, officials cannot record the unique driver number required to apply the points to the individual’s record on the National Vehicle and Driver File.
Gray has also called for the abolition of the system where drivers disqualified after accumulating 12 penalty points are asked to post their licences to a post office box in Cork. She said research by Parc found that only 6 per cent of banned drivers comply with that request.
Currie said a quarter of court-ordered driver disqualifications and almost half of all court-issued penalty points go unrecorded.
She said official figures show that in 2024, 25 per cent of court-issued driver disqualifications and almost 50 per cent of court-issued penalty points were not fully captured by the National Vehicle and Driver File.
“This is the database relied upon by An Garda Síochána and motor insurers to verify a driver’s status. These gaps are unacceptable in any enforcement system,” she said.
