Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 256: To ask the Minister for Transport if arrangements will be made in order that penalty points imposed become effective from the date of the offence, rather than delayed until the record is issued. [5886/05]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Road Traffic Act 2002, which provides the legislative basis for the introduction and operation of the penalty points system, contains specific provisions governing application of such points on the licence record of an individual. Section 5 of the Act provides that where penalty points are to be endorsed on a record, a notification of that endorsement must be issued to the licence holder involved. The notice sets out in particular the basis for the endorsement of the points. Section 7 of the Act provides that, save in very limited and quite specific instances, the operative date for penalty points is 28 days from the date of the notice issued under section 5. This date is referred to in the Act as the "appropriate date".

The provisions in the 2002 Act, in regard to the appropriate date, recognise that as a result of the endorsement of penalty points a person may face the application of an automatic disqualification from driving. Section 3 of the Act establishes that where a person accumulates at least 12 penalty points, he or she will be disqualified for a period of six months. If penalty points were to be applied from the date of the commission of the offence in the first instance, or from the date of the payment of the fixed charge, a person could be faced with the prospect that they would have already been disqualified in advance of any notification being sent to that effect. This would in turn create the situation that a person would be open to a charge of driving when disqualified where they had driven in the period between the commission of the original offence or the payment of the charge and the date of the notice.

The penalty points system has been designed and structured to ensure that any person who is accused of the commission of a penalty point offence is afforded a significant time period to chose whether or not to allow the matter to proceed to court. Save in respect of eight of the 69 offences determined to be penalty point offences in the Act, the option of the payment of a fixed charge is afforded to the accused person. A person presented with a fixed charge notice is given a period of 56 days in which to make such a payment before the certainty of a court summons is applied. There is, therefore, a potentially significant period made available to a person to make a decision and all of the time lapses relating to the system that are established in the Act are set out in the fixed charge notice issued in respect of the alleged commission of the offence.