Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 7, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following:
“7. The Minister shall require the Road Safety Authority to publish the breakdown of penalty points by licence type to show separately drivers with full licences, learner permits, no licence, licences from outside the jurisdiction, non-appearance in Court and unmatched penalty points from previous years.”.

This arose from an analysis of penalty points by the Road Safety Authority which we discussed the last day. The figures indicated that a total of 794,019 penalty points were distributed with 56.1% to full licence holders, 3.8% to learners and 40.1% to those with no licence. In the course of the proceedings the last day the Minister put the correct numbers into the record. The purpose of the amendment is that the data should inform to the degree that the Minister's statement did. The category of people with no licences in the documents circulated to us comprises the category which I took from the Minister's speech to us on Committee Stage. He said:

That is something we must deal with because that number will increase every year as they continue to accumulate.

The figures we have indicate that approximately 12.5% of events in any one year cannot be matched. The figure is 12.5% because 75% of the 12.5% are foreign drivers.

The Minister goes on to list the categories where the penalty points arise. We do not dispute the data relating to full licences or the learner permits but the other categories brought to the attention of the House by the Minister in his response are not in the official data, although they should be.

I am almost seconding the Minister's amendment to produce the data we have, which include no licence, licences from outside the jurisdiction, non-appearance in court and unmatched penalty points from previous years. It would give us better data from which to inform policy, because what appeared in the RSA data, given to the Library and Research Service here, had people with no licence accounting for 40.1% of the penalty points, and the Minister broke it down into categories which I find much more useful and much more valuable to us when trying to frame policy to respond to these situations. That is the purpose of the amendment.