Wrong facts in 70% of driver files

ONLY 30 per cent of driver licence records held by the National Vehicle Driver File (NVDF) in Shannon have the correct address for motorists.

The shortcoming was highlighted in a report into problems faced by the Republic, Northern Ireland and Britain in seeking to harmonise their penalty point regimes. This project aims to end the scenario where motorists from the Republic can speed in the North and not get penalty points, and vice versa.

One issue identified is the absence of the requirement for a driver in the Republic to inform the NVDF when they change address.

The report, written by British Department for Transport officials, says despite the lack of accurate address data, “in most cases” penalty points are correctly applied to Irish motorists.

When penalty points are given to the wrong driver “it is up to the individual concerned to ask the NVDF to correct it”, it adds.

For penalty point harmonisation to succeed, licencing authorities require a “high degree of assurance” that the address details of the registered owner of a car can be linked to the driver when a penalty point offence is detected.

This is to ensure the points can be applied to the appropriate driver’s record even if the licence is never surrendered to a court or the driver is outside the jurisdiction, the report says. But the UK report questions whether the NVDF is capable of this, saying “it is not clear that the Ireland records are sufficiently robust to achieve the desired result, even for resident drivers”.

A Department of Transport spokesman disputed the “30 per cent” figure, saying the department was happy with the NVDF and it “is fit for purpose”.

“The [30 per cent] figure was not supplied by the department. The accuracy of the NVDF is dependent on information from gardaí and the local motor tax office.

“We now issue a reminder letter and also have an arrangement with newaddress.ie,” he said.

He was unable to say what percentage of addresses on the NVDF was accurate, but added that new measures to improve its accuracy were being looked at. A spokeswoman for the British Department for Transport said she understood the 30 per cent figure had been obtained directly from the NVDF.

The report highlights other issues with the Republic’s penalty points system, such as the fact that neither gardaí, the Courts Services nor An Post – which handles the payment of penalty point fines – have direct access to a driver’s record.

The report says given the challenges facing the programme, it will be January 2013 at the earliest before harmonisation could be introduced.