Seanad debates

Wednesday, 24 May 2023

Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2021: Report and Final Stages

 

10:30 am

Photo of Eamon RyanEamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

These amendments are to make small but important technical corrections to the legislation underpinning the motor insurance database. The Bill seeks to insert a new section 56A into the Road Traffic Act 1961, which will require people applying for motor insurance to provide certain information to the insurer. This is information the insurer would need to have later to provide it for the database. The text as it stands currently would require capturing the driver licence details of persons to whom paragraph (a) of the proposed new section applies. In this context, the paragraph covers the person who applies for motor insurance and any person to be named on the certificate of insurance while driving is to be covered. The applicant for or holder of an insurance policy, however, may not be a natural person or may be a natural person who is not a driver. The existing wording, therefore, could create unnecessary difficulties where the policyholder was either a body corporate or a natural person who did not have a driver licence, or a natural person who had a driver licence but who is not to be covered by the policy.

Our intention here is to capture driver licence details of those drivers covered by a policy. The drivers covered by such a policy are listed in particular 6 of the statutory certificate of insurance. Where the holder of a policy is also a driver whose driving is covered by the policy, this person will be named in particular 6. The proposed amendment, therefore, is intended to capture all persons whose driving is covered, including the policyholder where his or her driving is covered. It would ensure as well, though, that we would not seek the driver licence details of a policyholder when he or she is not one of those people whose driving will be covered under the policy.

Similarly, the Bill also seeks to amend section 78A of the Road Traffic Act 1961, which sets out the information to be provided to the database by vehicle insurers. In this instance, we are proposing to make an amendment to the same effect, by substituting a reference to "particular 6 of the certificate of insurance" for a reference to "paragraph (a)". The only difference here, as against the proposed amendment to section 56A, is that we refer to persons "named in particular 6", while in section 56A we refer to persons "to be named". This is because section 56A refers to the application process, in other words, to a point where a certificate has yet to be issued. In the case of section 78A, the certificate already exists.

Amendments Nos. 1 and 3 seek to remove the difficulties caused by the current wording, while ensuring that the original intention to capture driver licence details for all drivers named as being covered on an insurance policy is addressed.

Amendment No. 2 is a proposed technical correction. The name of the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland is wrongly referred to in the current text as the "Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland".

Amendment No. 4 also proposes a small technical amendment. The provisions for capturing details of fleet insurance policies require certain data collected by the insurer or intermediary to be provided to the database and certain other details to be provided by the policyholder. The insurer or intermediary is to provide the address of the policyholder, but mention of the address is missing at this point in the text of the Bill. We are, therefore, seeking to rectify the omission in this regard.

Finally in this grouping, amendment No. 6 is a proposed technical amendment to section 11(a) of the Bill, which creates an offence where a person supplies false information in respect of certain provisions of the Road Traffic Act 1994. This is aimed primarily at addressing fraudulent applications for disabled parking permits. The Bill currently refers to persons providing "false or misleading information" in purported compliance with regulations providing for the matters in paragraphs (m), (s) or (t) of section 35(2) of the 1994 Act. Subsequent advice has indicated that the use of the singular "paragraph" rather than the plural "paragraphs" is necessary here to ensure the text means an offence would be committed if a person supplies "false or misleading information" under any one, two or three of the paragraphs in question and so we are proposing to make this change here.

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