Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party)
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200. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if his officials have engaged with the European Commission to seek an agreement regarding extending driver licences expiring after 1 July 2020 in view of the backlog in appointments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21453/20]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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In order to deal with the difficulties that arose due to the Covid-19 pandemic and to ensure consistency across EU Member States, the European Commission introduced a regulation in July 2020 to provide for an extension of 7 months to the validity of driving licences that expired or would expire from 1 February to 31 August 2020. Member States could opt out of the regulation if they had already provided nationally for an extension. Ireland opted out as we had already introduced legislation to apply a four month extension to the validity of driver licences that expired between 1 March 2020 and 30 June 2020.

As the situation in relation to Covid 19 remains extremely challenging and to ease pressure on services,, I have now introduced new legislation to further extend the validity period and the provision of the extension to the end of August 2020. Driving licences that expired or will expire between 1 March 2020 and 31 August 2020 are now extended for 7 months. This means that licences that expired between 1 March and 30 June will have an additional 3 months added to the initial 4 month extension, and licences that expired or will expire between 1 July and 31 August will be extended by 7 months. This brings our national legislation in line with the EU regulations.