Drivers should face disqualification if they receive more than 12 points for motoring offences committed in either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body has said. Currently, penalty points imposed in the Republic are not recognised by the NI authorities, and vice versa.
"There is no doubt that mutual recognition between NI and Ireland would bring benefits for road safety," according to a report prepared for the BIIPB.
An agreement between the Republic and the UK will be necessary, along with the creation of a list of comparable offences, before penalty points from either side of the Border can be totalled.
The interim report to the BIIPB, which was adopted at the body's two-day meeting in Kilkenny yesterday, was drafted by Senator Brian Hayes of Fine Gael and the former Northern Ireland Office minister, Lord Dubs.
Penalty points are not recorded on a Northern Ireland driver's licence for motoring offences committed in England, Scotland and Wales because the NI system operates independent of them.
"We were told that it would be difficult to pursue mutual recognition of penalty point systems in the UK and the Republic in absence of such recognition within the UK itself," Senator Hayes said.
However, significant legal and practical hurdles must first be overcome because both the British and NI systems require the involvement of the courts before a disqualification is imposed, while the Republic's system does not.
Department of Transport officials are already working on the issue with their NI counterparts in the hope that a bilateral agreement, using a 1998 European Union convention, can be agreed.
Northern Ireland drivers are currently able legally to hold an NI driving licence and another from Scotland, England or Wales, while NI provisional licence-holders can drive as full licence-holders elsewhere in the UK.In 1998 EU member-states signed a convention under which motoring disqualifications would apply across the Union, although it will not come into effect until all members have ratified it and brought forward domestic law.
