Dáil debates

Wednesday, 5 April 2006

Road Safety Authority Bill 2004: Report Stage (Resumed).

 

12:00 pm

Photo of Seán CroweSeán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

The major difficulty in this area is poor communication. The Garda find it difficult to obtain the relevant information if they stop a car. A young woman in my area has received a number of courts summonses in the past two years because someone passed her name on to the Garda. This young woman had never been in trouble with the law previously. The Garda knows the identity of the person who passed her name on to it but she was still forced to attend court over the two-year period. Some of the summonses related to driving offences. There was no evidence of any great urgency in dealing with these offences, which probably did not register highly on the radar screen but had a significant impact on this woman's life as she was forced to take time off work to attend court.

If a person is stopped by the Garda and it is suspected that he or she is disqualified under the penalty points system, the information must be accessible to the Garda. We are informed that, to date, gardaí on the beat do not have access to this information even though they may suspect that a driver has been disqualified. According to the Minister, information about penalty points will be available on the PULSE system. Will gardaí at a checkpoint or on the side of the road or who stop a motorist have access to this information? The system up to now has been characterised by poor communication. Difficulties have been encountered in informing people that they have been issued with penalty points because the system is quite slow. I do not know if the system will be speeded up so that people will be informed within a certain period. In some areas, certain people complained that they were unaware that they had been issued with penalty points. A number of these people appeared on chat shows and stated that they were unaware of the number of penalty points they had accrued as a result of their careless driving.

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