Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

Under the Road Safety Authority Act 2006 (Conferral of Functions) Order 2006 (SI No. 477 of 2006) the operation of the penalty points were applied. At the end of March 2009 there were 192,686 penalty points events recorded in respect of drivers who did not present an Irish driving licence. Of this total, a foreign licence was presented in 142,588 instances.

The NVDF only contains records of Irish driving licence holders and consequently it can only associate penalty points and other penalties for road traffic offences with the record of a driver with an Irish driving licence. The enforcement of penalties for road traffic offences on foreign-registered drivers is a complex legal and administrative matter and the Department is pursuing this question at European, British-Irish and North-South levels. I will also be proposing in the Road Traffic Bill currently being finalised a number of amendments which should improve some matters for driver records.

Unless motoring offences result in disqualification of the drivers concerned or in the application of penalty points, they cannot be recorded on the national vehicle and driver file. Operation of the penalty points system is a matter for the Road Safety Authority.

Until 21 April, the former Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, had specific responsibility for road safety and in that role he met the chief executive officer and chairman of the RSA on a number of occasions, both formally and informally. My officials meet the chief executive and the RSA's senior management team formally twice a year, but there is also regular contact between the two organisations on the variety of issues of road safety.

The Deputy has made some suggestions on reforming the national vehicle driver file to record and address all motoring misdemeanours committed by drivers in this jurisdiction. The position is that where a person incurs penalty points and where details of Irish driving licences are not available, the data are stored on the file on the basis of individual instances.

No benefit would be derived from the recording of all motoring misdemeanours generally and in any event their recording would be likely to infringe the Data Protection Acts.

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