Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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915. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the progress being made to extend the number of countries and jurisdictions with which a reciprocal agreement exists for the purpose of driving licence exchange; the jurisdictions with which negotiations are presently taking place with the view to establishing such agreements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27267/16]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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​Irish driver licensing law operates within a framework of EU driver licensing legislation. As such, we have exchange arrangements for driving licences with all other EU Member States.

In the case of non-EU States, we may reach bilateral agreements. These agreements are not a straightforward matter. Before an agreement can be reached, there must be detailed comparisons of the two driver licensing regimes so that each side may be satisfied that the standards applied in each jurisdiction are compatible. On the Irish side, this task is undertaken by the Road Safety Authority (RSA).

Currently, Ireland has agreements in place with the following non-EU countries or jurisdictions:

- Australia

- Canada – Provinces of Manitoba, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Ontario Gibraltar

- Iceland

- Isle of Man

- Japan

-Jersey

- Liechtenstein

- Norway

- New Zealand

-Taiwan

- South Africa

- South Korea

- Switzerland

The RSA has in recent years pursued agreements with the Canadian provinces. Three such agreements are now in place, and negotiations are continuing with the remaining Canadian provinces.

The driving force behind reaching these agreements is the need for agreements with countries with which their might be a large volume of exchange, subject as I have said to the compatibility of the systems in question. Currently we have agreement with all jurisdictions where there is significant demand, with the exceptions of the remaining Canadian provinces and the USA. In the American case, where each State has its own system, the RSA determined some time ago that the complexity of reaching 50 separate agreements, each of which would have to take into account the relations of the State in question to each of the remaining 49, would make agreement challenging.