As the Deputy is aware, the Courts Service has put in place arrangements to ensure that summonses issued since May 2012 include wording to advise persons charged with an offence under the Road Traffic Acts to bring their driving licence together with a photocopy of the licence when they are attending court. The conduct of any case before a court is a matter for the presiding judge. I am informed that the Courts Service has communicated with the judiciary to facilitate an arrangement that defendants who appear before the court are requested in court to produce their driving licence and a copy thereof to the court registrar for the purpose of having the driving licence number recorded. In this regard, where in accordance with the directions of the judge, a licence is produced in any District Court throughout the country to the court registrar, the licence details are recorded.
The Courts Service has now provided the statistics sought by the Deputy in response to Parliamentary Question No. 503 of 1 October 2013. The table below provides a breakdown of the number of defendants convicted of penalty point offences and the number of driving licences recorded in respect of those convictions for the period Mar 2012 – August 2013.
|
Month
|
No of defendants convicted
|
No of driving licence numbers recorded
|
% Licences
|
|
Mar-12
|
992
|
354
|
36%
|
|
Apr-12
|
818
|
260
|
32%
|
|
May-12
|
1,223
|
423
|
35%
|
|
Jun-12
|
1,030
|
393
|
38%
|
|
Jul-12
|
1,054
|
411
|
39%
|
|
Aug-12
|
1
|
0
|
0%
|
|
Sep-12
|
1,279
|
407
|
32%
|
|
Oct-12
|
1,182
|
507
|
43%
|
|
Nov-12
|
1,115
|
491
|
44%
|
|
Dec-12
|
791
|
328
|
41%
|
|
Jan-13
|
1,001
|
374
|
37%
|
|
Feb-13
|
1,026
|
439
|
43%
|
|
Mar-13
|
971
|
466
|
48%
|
|
Apr-13
|
1,032
|
443
|
43%
|
|
May-13
|
1,082
|
530
|
49%
|
|
Jun-13
|
987
|
409
|
41%
|
|
Jul-13
|
1,031
|
490
|
48%
|
|
TOTAL
|
16,615
|
6,725
|
40%
|
|
|
|
|
|
Note: Report is based on Defendants, so if defendant appeared in court more than once they only appear once on the report.
Note: The report does not include defendants who were convicted of road traffic offences which were not the subject of a fixed penalty notice in the first instance.
In relation to the statistics provided in response to Parliamentary Question 1086 of 18 September 2013, the Courts Service has now clarified that the statistics provided for the period March – June 2013 reflected defendants who were convicted of road traffic offences which were the subject of a fixed penalty notice in the first instance whereas the statistics provided for the period May 2012 – July 2012 referred to defendants who were convicted of road traffic offences whether or not such offences were the subject of a fixed penalty notice so the statistics were not directly comparable. The Service has now confirmed that the above table is an accurate reflection of the position regarding the collection of driving licence numbers since the introduction of the initiatives that it put in place last year.
