Motor insurers are granted access to the penalty point data on my Department's National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF) under Section 5(1) of the Road Traffic Act 2014. There is a signed agreement in place between my Department and the organisation concerned for the provision of penalty point data. The organisation in turn has signed agreements in place with insurance companies for the provision of penalty point data.
The Integrated Information Data Service (IIDS) is a centralised access point created and administered by the organisation concerned for its members. The IIDS does not store any penalty point data. The IIDS is the conduit through which the organisation's members query penalty point information from the NVDF. The organisation itself does not have access to query such data directly from the NVDF.
The data provided consists of the penalty point offence description, number of penalty points applied for the offence, date of the offence, start date of offence on the NVDF, the total number of days remaining for the offence; and the total number of penalty points applied.
Penalty Point Data is exchanged between the Department and the organisation via a secure web service interface mechanism which operates the IIDS. Information is made available in real-time to the organisation's members on a per query basis, with the system available 22 hours each day (unavailable for a period for resynchronisation of the web services system with the NVDF database). The organisation incurred a once-off charge for the development of this service. No charge is made to the organisation, or its members, for access to the NVDF data via this service.
The organisation's members do not have exclusive access rights to the NVDF. Penalty Point data on the NVDF is available to all vehicle insurers registered with the Central Bank of Ireland whether they are a member of the organisation or not. Any insurer can seek access to the same information by making an application to my Department. In such instances, similar to those of the organisation, once-off set up costs may be incurred by the insurer concerned.