Mr. Niall Doyle:

I thank the Chairman and the members for this opportunity to address the committee. We agree that the principal focus of the system must and should continue to be to improve driver behaviour and reduce deaths and serious injury on our roads. The human cost of collisions is incalculable and, as the Department of Transport's review points out, the financial cost to motor insurance underwriters, policyholders and the State is considerable. It is in the national interest that we should strive to reduce these costs.

Insurers, access to penalty points is an issue. Members will be aware of the Minister's statement last year regarding allowing us access to this information. We had been seeking this access since the then Minister, Séamus Brennan, introduced penalty points. The Irish Insurance Federation, IIF, and the Department of Transport, specifically the national vehicle and driver file unit in Shannon, initiated discussions on the development of a real-time interface. This involved access to and use of personal data. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner was included in these discussions from the outset.

An excellent tripartite relationship has been developed and I acknowledge the contributions of Gerry O’Malley from the national vehicle and driver file unit, NVDF, of the Department and of Gary Davis from the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, ODPC, for their ongoing assistance. The focus has been on the identification of critical, relevant information that highlights risks and assists in improving road safety nationally. I am pleased to inform the committee that we are well advanced in this project and that pilot testing should begin later this month.

Members of the committee will be aware that it is essential that proposers of insurance should disclose all relevant and material information relating to their risk. For compulsory motor insurance this includes any traffic convictions and penalty points they may have. Insurers use this information and several other rating factors such as vehicle type, engine size and type of use, as well as the claims history and driving experience of the driver to be insured to evaluate the risk and set an appropriate premium.

There are occasions when an underwriter will be given the wrong information and this may have several consequences. The underwriter cannot evaluate the risk correctly and as a result the risk may be under-priced and consequently other policyholders have to subsidise the cost of insuring the risk. Should the policyholder be responsible for an accident, the third party will be protected but the policyholder's damages may not be covered.

Allowing underwriters to verify particulars submitted in applications for insurance cover helps to mitigate the consequences outlined above and benefits the individual policyholder in that disclosure is complete and his or her policy is valid. It benefits underwriters in that they have appropriately priced the risk. It benefits other policyholders in that the risk burden is appropriately shared. It benefits the State in that the insurance system is aligned with and backs up the penalty points system, encouraging better driver behaviour and reinforcing the deterrent effect of penalty points, leading to reduced road fatalities and serious injuries on our roads.

Enforcement is a key message that is being transmitted this morning and we will continue in that vein. In our recent submissions to the Road Safety Authority and the Garda Síochána on the development of their new strategies, we stated that the priority road traffic offences should continue to be speeding, dangerous driving, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, failing to wear a seat belt, using a mobile phone while driving and uninsured driving. No amount of legislation, technological advancements or media campaigns will ever be an adequate substitute for high-level and highly visible police enforcement. The IIF is concerned that as the deployment of resources comes under increasing pressure as a result of the pressures on State spending, the focus on road safety may become less sharp, fewer resources may be deployed and road users may revert to old and bad habits. This point is borne out in the stalling of the reduction in road fatalities we have witnessed since the beginning of this year. While it is true to say that the downward trend was always going to slow or bottom out at some stage, we strongly believe this has occurred sooner than it otherwise might, specifically because of a fall-off of visible enforcement action or road users' perception that less enforcement activity is taking place. It is vital to ensure that road traffic enforcement resources are maintained or, if possible, increased and that a strong unambiguous message to this effect is constantly reinforced in road users’ minds to bolster the deterrent effect of the threat of enforcement action.

Every Government-appointed international expert has advised that spending on accident prevention and safety promotion generates economic benefits associated with lower casualties which heavily outweighs the costs incurred. Within reasonable limits, therefore, such additional spending must be seen as a particularly lucrative investment in the community and most emphatically not as merely a drain on the State's scarce resources. Such investment would be popular with citizens, road users, workers and employers and economically advantageous to the State, if efficiently applied, through reducing demands on the health and emergency services and minimising the lost productivity associated with accidental injury and long-term injury and disability.

We believe these considerations are particularly applicable to penalty points and to the use of the data supplied by insurers for use by the Garda's automatic number plate recognition, ANPR, system to detect uninsured driving. The technology has been procured and, if applied, will increase the efficiency of resource deployment and administration many times over. It will initially increase the number of detections and, as a consequence, act as an educator and a necessary deterrent.

One crucial statistic can be taken from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport's review. According to Garda reports, in 92% of fatal collisions driver error is the main contributing factor.

The use of statistics is often a crude exercise and can be used to prove or disprove almost anything. The most obvious sign that the road safety strategy is working is the reduction in fatalities in recent years and many congratulations are due to the stakeholders, especially the Road Safety Authority, RSA, and An Garda Síochána, without whom this achievement would not have been possible.

The members of the IIF consider that without the support of the Garda in particular, the successes of the last road safety strategy would not have been achieved. It is to the lasting credit of the force that it was able to support the objectives of the last strategy despite the resource constraints that have been imposed in recent years.

We do not have any tangible statistics on the levels of enforcement that are being used to assess the success of the current penalty points system. Such information is needed before we can evaluate whether the penalties that are being imposed are at the appropriate level. According to the Garda website, the number of fixed charge notices - penalty points - issued for mobile phone use when driving was 41,000 in 2008, 33,000 in 2009, 34,000 in 2010 and 33,000 in 2011. On the basis of an extrapolation from May of this year, the 2012 figure will be 33,000. The remarkable similarity among the figures from 2009 to 2012 could imply that the level of enforcement is consistent with no improvement in driver behaviour, or that the level of enforcement is inconsistent and a quota is being achieved. The evidence of our own eyes - that mobile phone use when driving is endemic - cannot be disputed. We believe the substantial increase in such behaviour over recent years is a consequence of the failure to make a determined and focused enforcement effort in this area. This may result from the national constraint on resources, but at what human and economic cost?

The dramatic increase in fixed charge notices issued for speeding between 2010 and 2011 also demands some scrutiny. Interpretations could range from a significant increase in enforcement activity to a significant deterioration in driver behaviour. We simply do not know. In the first instance, the members of the IIF would like to see comparative statistics using specific penalty points issued in the same area, at the same time of day, during the same time of the year, following the same number of penalty point checks carried out by the Garda Síochána. This would give us an indication of the effectiveness of the current penalty points system and allow us to determine whether an increase in enforcement activity, or in the severity of the penalties applied, will produce safer roads for our citizens.

Section 3.3 of the report lists the offences for which the Department recommends a penalty point increase. The IIF would be happy to support these recommendations subject to clarification of the current enforcement levels, as I have just described. We firmly believe the level of Garda enforcement of such penalty point offences has not reached or come close to the point of saturation at which further increases in enforcement yield no additional benefit. We suggest it would be premature to increase the penalties until that level is approached. Our view is that drivers who persistently break the speed limit will not be deterred from speeding by an increase in the penalty, but will be deterred by an increase in the likelihood of being caught. We believe it would be premature to implement any increase before completing the review of national speed limits and implementing the recommendations that arise from this review. Our views on drink driving are similar and can be summed up by saying we believe the current blood alcohol concentration levels are appropriate but should be rigorously enforced.

The Irish system is compared internationally in section 4.2 of the report. The IIF would be in favour of specific recommendations that make more efficient use of Garda time, for example by removing the requirement for a court appearance wherever possible or by establishing a traffic court in line with international best practice. The IIF agrees with the recommendation in the report that penalty points should be aligned north and south of the Border to facilitate mutual recognition between the two jurisdictions. We would also support consideration of the adoption of offences that are used internationally but are not currently recognised in Irish law.

I would like to speak briefly about uninsured driving. I understand that legislation on statutory off-road notification is before the Government and will be enforced next year. This will close a loophole. We suggest that serious consideration should be given to the introduction of a system of continuous insurance enforcement, whereby the registered keeper of a vehicle that is not insured would be subject to a fine and a penalty. That would require evidence that the vehicle is being used. I will explain it better. Currently, a garda must catch a person in the act of using an uninsured vehicle, as opposed to just keeping the vehicle. It would be better to close off that loophole. It would not add significantly to our premiums, but it would act as a deterrent and would be a way of administering it more efficiently.

The committee will appreciate that the operation of the penalty points system in the Courts Service is an important issue because accurate information is key to the operation of the system from the perspective of each stakeholder. With that in mind, it is essential that penalty points awarded to drivers through the courts system, and perhaps more specifically the details of those points, are transferred efficiently and correctly to the Department of Transport's national vehicle and driver file. If the file does not have correct and up-to-date information, then the data on it is not complete. We understand that certain improvements have been made in this regard. We hope this will continue.

The members of the IIF would like to reiterate their support for the penalty points system. We thank the Department of Transport for their support in developing underwriters' access to this information. This will improve the risk profile of the national motor fleet, provide a valuable service to our policyholders, enhance road safety and act as a deterrent to unsafe driving. Additionally and perhaps most importantly, the human and financial cost of accidents will be reduced. The review carried out by the Department is essential and should be repeated on a regular basis. We believe the recommendations regarding penalties of increased severity are premature in advance of the provision of usable statistics on the impact of different levels of enforcement on driver behaviour. We recommend the adoption of continuous insurance enforcement as a priority. The Garda technological and human resources that are necessary for the ongoing operation of this system need to be allocated to ensure we maximise the benefits that our existing legal framework and technological capability permit us to achieve.