Road Traffic Offences

Thursday, 17 September 2020

Questions (167)

Catherine Murphy

Question:

167. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Justice the number of drivers detected driving without a licence in 2018; 2019 and up to 31 July 2020; the number summoned to court for the offence per year; the penalties imposed per year; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24635/20]

View answer

Written answers

Minister for Justice

I have requested information from An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service on the matter requested by the Deputy and will write directly to the Deputy when it is received.

The following deferred reply was received under Standing Order 51

I refer to Parliamentary Question No. 167 which was for answer on the 17 September 2020, in which you asked for; ‘the number of drivers detected driving without a licence in 2018; 2019 and up to 31 July 2020; the number summoned to court for the offence per year; the penalties imposed per year; and if she will make a statement on the matter’ As you may recall, the information you requested could not be obtained in the time available and I undertook to contact you again when the information was to hand. The requested information has now been provided by An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service.

The following table provided by An Garda Síochána show the number of proceedings taken in relation to Driving without a driving licence 2018-2020. 2020 figures are for the period from January – July 2020.

Year	2018	2019	2020 (Jan – July)
Driving without a Driving licence	22,527	20,557	10,515

* All figures provided are provisional, operational and subject to change.

Please note that we have been advised by An Garda Síochána that these statistics are not compiled in such a way as to identify specific number of arrests for driving while disqualified under section 6(b) and (c) of the Road Traffic Act, as this would necessitate an extensive manual trawl of all relevant incidents recorded on PULSE to collate same, which would require a disproportionate expenditure of Garda time and resources.

Further to the statistics provided by An Garda Síochána, the Courts Service have provided the tables appended to this reply. Please note that we have been informed by the Courts that they can only provide data in relation to where offence codes provided on the system were used by prosecutors. Prosecutors may have used uncoded free text offences and any such offences would not be included in the data provided.

I trust this information is of assistance.

Appendix 1

Report on the number of drivers before the courts by way of summons or charge sheet for driving without a licence for 2018, 2019 and Jan – July 2020.

Year	No of Persons before the Courts
Jan – Dec 2018	16,851
Jan – Dec 2019	17,726
Jan – July 2020	7,531

Report on the no of orders & no of persons per order for the years 2018; 2019 & Jan – July 2020.

		Jan – Dec 2018		Jan – Dec 2019		Jan – 31 July 2020
Court Orders	No of Orders	No of Persons	No of Orders	No of Persons	No of Orders	No of Persons
Community Service Order	66	64	76	68	21	19
Dismiss	184	176	253	242	122	120
Dismiss Probation Act	44	44	53	52	9	9
Disqualification	480	411	535	445	216	176
Fine	3,440	3,166	3,428	3,100	1,094	1,016
Imprisonment	234	171	312	244	123	86
Imprisonment - Part Suspended	1	1	1	1	1	1
Imprisonment - Suspended	180	177	194	187	63	56
No Order	89	83	115	95	41	39
Other	3	3	12	6	2	2
Peace Bond	3	3	2	2	3	3
Poor Box	6	6	11	11	3	3
Probation Order	52	34	45	37	8	8
Sent forward for Trial			3	3	1	1
Strike Out	6,813	6,386	6,449	6,041	2,122	2,032
Strike Out - Not Served	4,680	3,865	4,986	4,184	2,728	2,485
Taken Into Consideration	3,623	2,826	3,903	2,990	1,451	1,144
Withdrawn	1,621	1,545	2,365	2,265	924	897
Total	21,519	18,961	22,743	19,973	8,932	8,097

Please note that a person may have received more than one order and will appear on the above report twice and an offence may have more than one penalty imposed and as such will also appear twice on the report.