Under the Road Traffic Act 2002, penalty points are required to be endorsed on the Irish driving licence record held on the National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF) and a current driving licence is required to serve penalty points.
For the majority of cases this endorsement takes place without difficulty against the relevant NVDF driver record. However, where a person is the holder of a foreign licence and has not exchanged this licence for an Irish licence, the endorsement of the points on the NVDF is not currently possible.
In such instances the penalty points record is suspended and the penalty points period does not "count down" in the fashion that applies to normal penalty points events. "Counting down" means that in normal circumstances, when a person has penalty points applied to their licence, those penalty points are removed after three years.
The 2010 Road Traffic Act moved to correct this anomaly and under Part 5 of that Act will allow the NVDF;
to create an official NVDF driver record for a person who amongst other issues, does not have an Irish licence record, or is the holder of a foreign licence; and
to record multiple penalty points events against a driver record created in any of the aforementioned circumstances.
Part 6 of the 2010 Act, which was commenced on 1st June 2010, expands the definition of a driving licence to include foreign driving licences so as to bring these within the scope of sanctions for road traffic offences including disqualifications.
Without the provisions of Part 5 of the Road Traffic Act 2010 these penalty points could remain indefinitely in this limbo, which is an administrative arrangement to store the fact that the person has penalty points to be added to a licence record. In all these cases, the NVDF issues a notification of penalty points to the driver in question so the driver is aware of the situation.
Part 5 of the 2010 Act and the associated provisions of Part 3, which deal with changes to the fixed charge system, must await the addressing of administrative and technical issues by the Courts Service and Gardaí. However, work is on-going with both the Court Services and the Gardaí, including any necessary changes to IT systems, in order to commence the relevant sections of the 2010 Act.
When these provisions are implemented, penalty points will be applied to holders of foreign driving licenses, and they will be disqualified from driving in this State if they exceed 12 penalty points within a 3 year period.
Discussions are currently taking place, under the North South Ministerial Council, between officials of my Department and the relevant authorities in Northern Ireland towards agreeing an arrangement for the mutual recognition of penalty points for certain road traffic offences. The work involved is complex and will take some time to complete.
