Seanad debates

Wednesday, 14 June 2006

Road Traffic Bill 2006: Committee Stage (Resumed).

 

8:00 pm

Photo of Pat GallagherPat Gallagher (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The purpose of the inclusion of Part 8 to the First Schedule to the Road Traffic Act is to make the offence of not having a valid certificate of roadworthiness for a commercial vehicle a penalty point offence. Part 8 removes the anomaly in this offence, as the equivalent offence for not having a valid NCT certificate for a car has been listed as a penalty point offence since 2002.

The penalty points regime to apply under Part 8 is identical to that which is already in place for the NCT certificate offence. Failure to have an NCT certificate or a certificate of roadworthiness for a liable vehicle is a serious offence. A person convicted of not having an NCT certificate for a car on two occasions within a period of three years will, in addition to the normal penalty — a fine of €1,500, a prison term of up to three months, or both — be disqualified from driving a vehicle for six months. Given that a disqualification from driving could arise as a direct consequence of being convicted for failure to have a valid NCT certificate, the fixed charge payment arrangement does not apply in regard to that offence. As the penalty points regime applying to cars and the consequential driving disqualification has been extended to goods vehicles and buses by this Bill, it would not be appropriate, for the reasons previously mentioned, to apply the fixed charge payment arrangement to this new category of penalty points offence, which Senator Paddy Burke proposes in his amendment No. 102.

Amendment No. 103 which proposes that the number of penalty points on conviction for not having a valid certificate of roadworthiness should be four instead of five, as provided for in this Bill, would introduce an inconsistency between cars and other vehicles for penalty purposes for what are essentially identical offences.

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