Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

This important motion tries to bring to the attention of the Government and the country the good aspects of the penalty points system and the reduction in deaths thanks to road safety, but also the problems in the system causing serious and sustained difficulties for the Garda, the administrators of the Courts Service and people who comply with the law generally.

It is of concern that the Government did not see fit to accept the motion. We drafted it in such a way that we assumed the Government would want to understand the nature of the problems. Effectively, nearly 500,000 people have received penalty points since the system's introduction and it works well if people pay. If one pays within the first 28 days, there is a fine and penalty points.

We want to address the problems within the penalty points system. I welcome the Minister to the debate, although he has not heard everything I have stated. This side of the House welcomes the reduction in the number of road deaths and the fact that penalty points are being issued, but we are examining problems with the issuing of points and the way in which the courts system is gummed up as a result.

I wish to refer to a document from the Courts Service that explains the problems succinctly. From 1 January to 31 June 2007, more than 88,000 summonses were issued to people who had not paid in the first 56 days. If one does not pay within that time, it becomes an unstoppable process and the case must go to court. If one is late, one cannot pay outside the system and must go to court. When this document was drawn up, it was expected and anticipated that there were a further 20,000 summonses in the system, bringing the figure to above 100,000.

Of the summonses issued, nearly 44,000 were not served. For some reason, the Garda was unable to serve the summons on the individual or the summons, either issued through registered post or normal post, did not reach the appropriate person. There is a serious question for the Garda to answer in this respect. It is extremely busy and some of the 43,000 people to whom it tried to serve summonses were not at home or had moved address, but not all of them would have been unavailable. There is a clear issue in terms of the serving of summonses. If penalty points are to effective and universally applicable, it is not acceptable that 43,000 people were not served with summonses for not paying fines. The number of cases struck out by the courts amounted to nearly 24,000. Of the 88,000 summonses issued, those that resulted in fines and the imposition of penalty points amounted to 14,171, a small number considering the effort involved.

The Courts Service was clear in the opinion it expressed to the Department of Transport and has good, succinct and practical ways to deal with the issue. First, it proposed that after the 56 day period has elapsed, the case should be handed over to a private debt collection agency to pursue the outstanding fine. This would make a great deal of sense because the offence would be kept out of the courts, as the idea was to deal with these "minor" traffic offences, most of which involve speeding, outside the court system. If one does not pay within the first 56 days, there is no reason a private debt collection agency should not pursue the fine.

Second, the outstanding fines could be collected with car tax at the next car tax renewal as is done successfully in other jurisdictions. Third, we should increase the penalty points incurred if the fine remains unpaid. The default position should be that a fine is automatically imposed unless the person decides he or she wants a court hearing. The current position is that summonses must be issued even though the offender has no intention of defending the case. Putting the onus on the offender to indicate whether he or she wishes to have the case dealt with in court would declog the system.

According to the Courts Service, the District Court cannot sustain the work imposed on it. Much of the time of the Courts Service, the Garda and others is wasted by not getting a result. More than 60% of summonses issued in October 2006 did not result in convictions, representing a considerable waste of time for Garda, court and Courts Service staff and a waste of public money. When the proposed new system's privatised speed cameras are introduced and detection levels increase, the number of summonses will inevitably rise with no basis for optimism that the outcome will be any better.

According to the Courts Service, the District Court cannot sustain the level of prosecution of fixed penalty points. Waiting times in Dublin in particular are unacceptably high and the potential for further deterioration when privatised speed cameras are introduced is significant. There is a serious risk of cases being challenged for delays in prosecution simply due to the volume of cases in the system.

There is an urgent need for reform of the current legislation, which is not achieving its aim of keeping minor offences out of court. Members of the Oireachtas and the Departments of Transport and Justice, Equality and Law Reform should get together to solve this issue. There is no confidence in the system as it operates. This side of the House wants the Minister to take on board specific and important opinions, for which reason I am unhappy with the way the Government has amended our motion. Despite our tabling the motion in what we believed to be an acceptable manner, the Government cannot take it on board. There is arrogance at the heart of the Government's approach to the issue.

We support the penalty points system and the downward trend in road deaths, but we realise there is a fundamental error in the law. It is not working properly, particularly in respect of Garda time. Imagine the time and resources wasted by the Garda were it to serve 88,000 summonses and succeeded half of the time. Will the Minister speak with the people concerned and change the Act?

Of the 126,000 people who have committed offences but on whom penalty points cannot be imposed because they do not have driver licences, everyone acknowledges that a significant number are from the North. While I will not go into the previous debate, we must fast-track co-operation between the North and South jurisdictions, notwithstanding that the North is working on the legislation.

If we examine the statistics on the website www.penaltypoints.ie carefully, we notice certain things. Of the 1,900 penalty points issued for careless driving, 1,800 were issued to people without driving licences. Of the 671 penalty points issued for dangerous driving reduced to careless driving, 643 of the people involved did not have a driving licence. Importantly, of the 6,778 penalty points issued to people for not having insurance, 6,485 of those did not have driving licences. A significant cohort of people, therefore, do not obey the law in any respect. They do not have licences or insurance. They are careless drivers. They are a category of people we must go after much more effectively.

The Minister must effect an immediate change in the data available to the Garda at the point of interaction with the public. When the gardaí stop a car and key in the number to determine if the occupant has insurance, unfortunately, many of the insurance discs are forged. We need joined up thinking between the collective motor insurance companies and the Garda Síochána and I believe it is only a matter of connecting the Garda to the system. In that way gardaí will know immediately whether the driver has insurance. That would be an important step forward.

Many of the people who go to court, and this aspect has been commented on by the Courts Service, get the penalty points but they must bring their driving licence with them when they go to court. The law is clear in this respect. Gardaí cannot take the licence from the licence holder. The obligation is on the licence holder to give it to the gardaí but in the case of many drivers — I do not know the numbers involved; the Minister might be in a position to ask his officials to determine exact facts in this regard — when they go to court and get their penalty points they do not give up their licences and therefore the penalty points cannot be applied. That applies to the issue my colleague, Deputy Mitchell, raised earlier about drivers who have gone over the 12 points but who do not surrender their licences, and the Minister cannot force them to surrender their licences until he changes the law. I understand the police in the United Kingdom can take the licence from the driver on the spot. We cannot do that here.

I ask the Minister to examine the motion again with a view to making fundamental changes in the law. He must consult with the key players — the Courts Service, the Garda, the motor insurance bureau and all the people concerned. I emphasise that all sides of the House should be ad idem on these issues. We should agree and go forward together because this is about saving lives, reducing injuries on our roads and safer driving. If nine out of every ten accidents in this State are caused by driver error we must get at the cohort of people who are thumbing their noses at the law. If it is a fact that of all the cases that go to court summonses are not served in respect of half of them and that penalty points cannot be applied to a significant number of people because they do not have their licences, we are not doing enough to address the problem, notwithstanding the progress that has been made.

We must get our act together on this issue. The Minister must put in place an efficient, effective core system that will ensure only serious cases go to court. The Minister called them, in respect of penalty points, mandatory cases. If it is a mandatory case it should go to court. If not, it should not go to court.

Under section 5 of the 2006 Act, there is a provision whereby if somebody is arrested for drunken driving and he or she is over the limit, they can be required to pay a mandatory payment on the spot. If the driver is slightly, but not significantly, over the limit the Minister has the power in law to put that person off the road and make him pay the fine without going to court. That would have a significant impact in terms of compliance with the law in that if someone is caught drink driving they are put off the road immediately and the case is kept out of court. It also saves Garda time in that gardaí can enforce the mandatory penalties and be in court for the serious offences.

See this speech in context