HELPDESK: MICHAEL McALEER Answers all your motoring queries
From C Nolan: Following your letter/response regarding speed limit on M1 in Santry in Motors I wrote to the Garda fixed charge processing office re penalty points fixed charge fine issued re alleged speeding at M1 in May 2008, during the time that special speed limit was not legally in effect. I attach a copy of their response, and would appreciate your comments.
From L OF: On March 4th you stated that Tim OBrien had been looking into this matter and that alleged offences between November 13th. 2007 and November 21st 2008 had been struck out. You further said that people in this category who had paid the fines could now apply to the Garda citing the judgment of the court and ask that their penalty points be lifted and fine refunded.
As one of the unfortunates who was caught in this swoop, following your article, I contacted the Driver Licensing Section, Road Safety Authority, Ballina to seek to have my fine remitted and my penalty points lifted. They emphatically assured me that your information was incorrect and that due process had been followed. They regretted that they were unable to consider my request even though the alleged offence had occurred within the period stated in your article. Could you return to this matter? I still feel bad about being fined for doing 98km/h on a motorway without, what I would consider, adequate sign-posting or prior notification.
Tim O’Brien writes: The position the Garda and RSA are taking, is that there was no requirement to publish in Iris Oifigúil. This was not the position taken by the District Court judge on the dates in question when the cases were dismissed. Perhaps the only solution here is to go back to the court and ask for a direction.
As to the claim by the RSA in Ballina that our information in incorrect, it is difficult to see which part of our facts on the matter are inaccurate. The information we provided last week is verifiable. Nearly 700 cases were struck out by District Court Judge Clare Leonard in November 2008 relating to the issue of the required notification in Iris Oifigúil on the setting of speed limits.
In the letter received by Mr Nolan from the Garda authorities it states: “There is no provision in law to provide a monetary refund or expungement of penalty points in this particular case”.
However there is fact precedent for this. As we reported in January 2008, Chief Superintendent John Farrelly wrote to a motorist at the time stating: “Due to an administrative error, whereby the relevant bylaws were not in force, a decision was made to refund all paid notices and have penalty points expunged [our emphasis] from all affected driving licence files.” This letter refers to remarkably similar circumstances to this case, was dated March 2007.
In a second letter in April 2007, from the Road Safety Authority (RSA), the same motorist was told the penalty points “endorsed in error on your driving licence record in respect of an alleged offence have been removed, following instruction from An Garda Síochána”.
(See www.irishtimes.com/ newspaper/motors/2008/0130/1201501715560.html)
We will be referring this correspondence to the Garda Commissioner’s office in the hope of finding clarity.
From MAC: According to the recent report in your newspaper, the NCT may include a test for the functioning of the rear registration plate lamp, from the start of 2010.
My car received a Fail/Refusal for exactly that, in September 2005! The car had to be retested within a month. There was no extra charge. Was this a mistake by the tester? May I sue?
According to Patrick Logue who wrote that article: “Under existing NCT rules a non-functioning registration plate lamp will result in a fail but the defect is considered ‘visual’. Once the problem is fixed you can return to the NCT centre to show the testers and get your certificate with no additional cost. Under the new proposals such a defect will result in a fail and require a full retest. So, no, it wasn’t a mistake, and you cannot sue.”