Loophole allows motorists avoid points

Garda Síochána: Motorists caught speeding or not wearing seat belts can escape incurring penalty points by providing gardaí with an inaccurate licence number when they are paying their fine, the 2003 annual report of the Comptroller and Auditor General has revealed.

Under current legislation even if gardaí later notice the inaccuracy, they are powerless to address it. Gardaí do not have the power to retrospectively demand drivers' licences to check the authenticity of licence numbers on fixed penalty payment paperwork.

The loophole in the law has arisen because gardaí do not have access to the National Driver File, in order to authenticate licence numbers, at the time of payment. The matter has been brought to the attention of the Department of Transport with a view to addressing it under the Road Traffic Bill 2004.

A spokesman for the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, said the issue would be addressed by the legislation, which will come into law at the end of this year or beginning of next year.

It is not known how many motorists have escaped incurring points in this manner. However, of the 99,000 penalty point notices issued to drivers to the end of 2003, some 12,900 escaped incurring points. Some of these were driving foreign-registered cars or under foreign licences.

An unknown number escaped because they had included an inaccurate drivers' licence number on their fine payment paperwork.

The comptroller's report also states that 47 per cent of drivers caught on Garda cameras speeding or not wearing seat belts in the 14 months to December 31st, 2003, were not prosecuted because images from cameras were too poor, or because number plates were dirty or obscured. This resulted in an estimated loss of revenue to the State of around €6 million.

The notices, 50,567 in all, were spoiled for a variety of reasons including dirty, obscure, or damaged number plates; tampered, non-conforming or foreign plates; or because the vehicle detected speeding was a motorcycle. A number of technical problems also resulted in the spoiling of camera images. These included dirty lenses, poor weather conditions, obstructed lenses, computer-related problems, and problems with chemical developing solutions.

The comptroller, Mr John Purcell, noted that payment had been received in respect of just 56 per cent of notices issued in the first 14 months of the penalty points system to December 2003. This had raised €6.1 million in revenue. There had been a low summons rate, of just 18 per cent, for unpaid notices.

Mr Purcell said, in cases where drivers were caught speeding or not wearing seat belts in company cars, once a company ignored a notice from gardaí to nominate a driver for the vehicle at the time of the offence, gardaí could not proceed with the case. There had been 235 such cases up until the end of last year.

Under the law an individual driver, and not a company, can be prosecuted as a licence holder. Legal changes planned by the Department of Transport are aimed at resolving the anomaly.

Gardaí do not make any attempt to identify the drivers of foreign-registered vehicles detected speeding, and no records are maintained as to the number of such offences.

While there were 1,093 summonses to individuals driving under foreign licences, gardaí encountered difficulties pursuing these because the DPP had advised prosecutions arising from such summonses would be unlikely to succeed.

The "cumbersome" manual nature of the penalty points system has also resulted in more than 4,500 drivers escaping prosecution because their fixed charge notices were not issued within the six-month time limit, and they became statute barred. This involved some 4,561 offences to the end of 2003.

In May 2003 a new information technology system was introduced to clear a four-month backlog in the processing of films and tapes relating to penalty points offences.