Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I am grateful to Deputy Keaveney for raising this matter. I share her concern at the presence of untaxed vehicles on our roads. As she points out, honest motorists are fed up with the small hardcore who continually evade paying their road taxes. The Exchequer loses millions in revenue each year to those evaders.

I was interested to hear the Deputy say that she had raised this issue in the past with the Department of Transport and was told it was the responsibility of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. If I were circulating a script tonight, it might give the opposite impression, so I am not circulating a script. I will confine myself to taking a positive view of what the Deputy said.

Essentially, this is a number plate recognition system. I believe that in the United Kingdom it is operated by non-police personnel. It can be left deployed merely to record that a particular car passed a particular place. The fact that a car is on the road can then be relayed either for immediate or subsequent evaluation to decide whether the car was taxed. Such equipment can clearly be useful but it would depend on the equipment being interoperable with the computerised motor vehicle file system of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. It would also have to be interoperable with the summonsing method being used in the points system for speeding offences and so on.

Three Departments have a responsibility for this issue which is contiguous and which should be managed in a co-ordinated way. Rather than trying to pass the buck back, I will call on my colleagues in the Departments of Transport and the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to attempt to ensure that technology of this kind is available to the Garda Síochána.

As the Deputy knows, we are increasing Garda numbers, currently by 2,000 extra recruits. The road traffic corps will be increased from about 500 to 1,200 so that on a cumulative basis, 700 of the new recruits will be allocated to road traffic duties over the next three years. I want to ensure that those additional gardaí are on frontline policing duties and not spending their time dealing with paper work in back offices. The Garda Commissioner is in full agreement with me on this.

To get compliance in areas such as this and to save valuable Garda resources, a computerised system which is interoperable with the databases to which I referred is the appropriate way forward. I thank the Deputy for raising the matter and I intend to discuss it with the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche. I will then give the Deputy a considered response regarding the logistical implications of mirroring in this State the system which operates in Northern Ireland and in other parts of the United Kingdom. I hope that the initiative the Deputy has taken in drawing this technological possibility to my attention will not be wasted for want of co-ordination between the three responsible Departments.

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