Legal loophole to close after 17,000 avoid penalty points

STEPS ARE being taken to close a legal loophole that has enabled drivers to escape penalty points, the Road Safety Authority said yesterday.

Since 2003, 17,656 drivers who should have incurred penalty points for road traffic offences have escaped the sanction because of a loophole in the law.

The loophole has resulted in driving licence numbers not being passed on to the Road Safety Authority by the courts. There is no legal requirement for court staff to pass on licence details to the RSA.

“It’s not a free-for-all, and court convictions stand . . . the difficulty here is just applying the penalty points. New provisions in the 2009 Road Traffic Act will close off this loophole,” a spokesman for the authority said.

RSA chief executive Noel Brett said a court clerk usually writes down a driving licence number and forwards it to the RSA, “but it is not a legal requirement, so in some instances, the driver will just not bring their licence to court and won’t have it present, and that’s not followed up, or hasn’t been followed up in many instances.

"Or, in some courts, the court clerk just simply doesn't collect that data," he said in an interview on RTÉ's Morning Irelandprogramme.

A spokesman for the Courts Service said staff recorded drivers’ licence numbers “as required by law, and where able”.

“However, they can only do this when a licence is produced. . . . The matter of following up such an offence is not a matter for the Courts Service.”

He said it was a “slur on the integrity of our dedicated and able staff” to suggest they were not bothering to collect the information.

The Department of Transport said there was an obligation on those charged in court to present a driving licence, and a provision in the Road Traffic Bill, 2009, would compel a person to present a photocopy of the licence to court staff.

A spokeswoman for the department said the time frame for the drafting of the Bill was an issue for the political party whips.

Labour spokesman on transport Tommy Broughan criticised what he said was “incompetence at the highest level” in the Department of Transport.

A number of penalty point offences carry a mandatory court appearance. These include having no insurance, driving when unfit and careless driving.