Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I will not push the matter to a vote. The provision in the Bill hankers back to a bygone era when if one was presented with something one carried it as a token of its existence. With the advent of the Internet, online access makes the question of who is licensed abundantly clear. Other road transport legislation requires that people display their NCT certificates, insurance discs and tax discs, but we can move away from this regulatory burden and paper processing at some point, given that most, if not all, of the data are contained in electronic format. It will not be long before law enforcement officers will have access to the Internet from their vehicles to determine whether someone has insurance. This is already the case in other jurisdictions.

There is a necessity to present an insurance disc or other item of motor vehicle "jewellery", as it is called, but many of the documents in question are forged to a high standard. Therefore, the mere presentation of them by the driver or their presence on the dashboard does not ensure that the driver is a bona fide operator. I will not object to this provision's presence in the legislation, but the Department needs to examine the regulatory regime and recognise that, where many of the documents are concerned, the potential for forgery is real. The requirement that an individual carry a licence or face a fine is unnecessary and moves us away from the resolution to the matter, namely, faster access to the back-end database maintained by the Department or a regulatory authority. This access would make it easier for law enforcement agents to decide at an early stage whether someone was compliant.

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