Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This continues to be a massive problem. Road safety organisations, like the outstanding PARC, continually bring it to my attention that they believe the Garda PULSE system is outdated. There could be several recorded dates of birth for a person and different addresses. Unlike the Police Service of Northern Ireland, we do not have roadside hand-held devices.

I also asked the Minister about the process whereby the Road Safety Authority, RSA, and An Garda Síochána work together to establish the validity of a driving licence number and the number of inquiries received by the RSA. I notice the information sent by the Minister indicates there were just 1,268 Garda inquiries to the RSA in 2014, 1,425 in 2015 and 1,712 in 2016 and January 2017. As the Minister knows, these seem to be very low numbers considering the number of speeding cases before the courts around the country between January 2015 and October 2016, which yielded 14,572 convictions but just 6,165 had their licences recorded. There is a lacuna. I note this morning the Minister indicated he would introduce three or four new pieces of legislation. Why does he not address this issue once and for all? We could have done it in the road traffic Bill but we did not. I urge the Minister to take action. We must have a very clear stream of information.

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