Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is exactly right; sometimes people will get through the net. When there is an accident and the driver drives off, the information will go to the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland, MIBI, which would be responsible for making a payout in such a case. It might be logged as potentially involving an uninsured driver. He or she might have had insurance but for whatever reason did not want to be caught as having caused an accident. The key point concerns the linking of information that is being collected but which is not being linked in the appropriate fashion. There was an attempt to roll out automatic number plate recognition technology, but it did not work because the database was not robust enough. If the Senator looks at recommendation No. 28 in the action plan, as well as actions Nos 61 to 63, they are to put in place from the third quarter of this year the first phase of a fully functioning database which will be integrated to identify uninsured drivers. It also means that we will have to compel the insurance companies to obtain driver licence numbers and look at the national driver file, as well as the national vehicle file.

Where we want to go with this is to have a master licence record. This is a plan that was already in place and we are now expediting it through this work, whereby all of the information that a driver might have is linked appropriately in the one file in the one place so that it can be checked quickly and robustly when the Garda Síochána needs to do so.

The Senator mentioned other issues. Some of them come down to Garda enforcement. The quicker we get our databases in place and the quicker An Garda Síochána can use automatic number plate recognition technology, the better. When An Garda Síochána finds that there has been a fake insurance disc used or a lack of insurance disc, there is usually something else happening as well, such as the person not paying tax on the car or something else that might be even worse. The Chairman has paid a lot of attention to telematics in previous contributions that he made in public. This is something that is really going to change the insurance industry in the next ten years, though it is very hard to get an idea of how much it will. In the same way, the use of technology is really going to help An Garda Síochána as well. We could get to a point at which a garda might have an automatic system on his or her jacket without even having to turn it on that checks number plates automatically as the garda walks down the street.