Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Driving disqualification court order information is sent electronically from the Courts Service to my Department. This information is then endorsed on driver records on the Department's National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF).

If a court order cannot be matched automatically against an Irish driver record, the National Driving Licence Service (NDLS), operated by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) undertake a manual search to attempt to match the record. In the event that a match cannot be found, a ‘shell’ record is created on the NVDF to track the court order.

It is important to note that some disqualifications are imposed on drivers who do not hold (or may never have held) a licence or drivers who hold foreign licences. Therefore, due to cases like these, it will never be the case that all disqualifications orders will have an NVDF record to be matched to.

However, it is also the case that some disqualifications are imposed on Irish licence holders but it is not possible to match these to the appropriate record. As the Garda Inspectorate Report explains, the primary cause for this is the failure of the individual to produce their driving licence in court. This is a topic which is subject of ongoing work to address between my Department, the Department of Justice and the Courts Service.

The number of distinct driver records, including shell records, that had driving disqualifications imposed based on court orders received from the Courts Service every year from 2014 to 2023 is as follows. As noted above, the shell records include foreign licensed drivers, unlicensed drivers and Irish-licensed drivers where a match has not been made. Please note that some driver records, including shell records, have had multiple disqualifications; the figures represent the number of drivers disqualified.

The process for the provision for penalty point information from the Courts Services to my Department is similar to that described above for disqualifications. The same challenges around matching exist. However, due to the manner in which penalty point records are structured on the NVDF, it is not possible to provide comparable statistics over the time period. This is because penalty points are "expunged" from the NVDF record after they have expired. The majority of penalty points are therefore no longer recorded on the NVDF.