Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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147. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of disqualification court orders received from the Courts Service per year from 2017 to date in 2022 in which the RSA could not match a disqualification against drivers who have an Irish driving licence or learner permit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57197/22]

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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149. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of driver disqualifications received from the Courts Service per year from 2017 to date in 2022 which resulted in mismatches; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57199/22]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 147 and 149 together.

My responses to Parliamentary Questions 210 of 25 October 2022 and 193 of 8 November 2022 addressed this matter. Unmatched records, referred to as "shell" records are created only in situations where an Irish Driving Licence or Learner Permit could not be matched to an individual; and as such the number of Irish Driving Licence holders or Learner Permit holders on the shell record file is zero.

The number of shell records is as provided in my reply to Parliamentary Question No. 210 of 25 October 2022. The details for the period January to 14 November 2022 is as follows:

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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148. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will confirm that the automation process for sending notification of driver disqualifications by the Courts Service to Transport, which went live in September 2022 in phase 1 of the programme of work, will only automate records of disqualified drivers where a driver number has been captured; if he will report on the progress of phase ll of the programme of work which will cover all remaining records and the date set for completion of phase ll; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57198/22]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Where the driver disqualification details supplied by the Courts Service to the National Driving Licence Service (NDLS) include a driver number, and match a driver record on my Department's National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF), the disqualification is automatically applied to the driver record concerned.

It is a legal requirement to bring your licence to court. However, as per my response, to Parliamentary Question 52722/22, where the court order cannot be matched automatically, the NDLS attempt to match the record manually. Over 75% of records are matched automatically or as a result of the manual matching process by the NDLS. The remaining 25% of court orders are assigned to ‘Shell’ driver records, where the details supplied could not be matched to any driving licence or learner permit holder on the NVDF. This could be a result of the driver never having an Irish licence or the driver holding a foreign licence.

There are currently no plans by my Department for a subsequent phase of this project.