A law is intended to be in place within weeks to close a legal loophole under which some drivers have avoided penalty points by getting a 24-hour driving ban, the Department of Transport has said.
The aim is to present a commencement order to the Minister for Transport for signature before the end of the month, a department spokesman said on Wednesday.
After the loophole was highlighted by The Irish Times more than a year ago, an amending provision was subsequently included in the Road Traffic Act 2024 aimed at closing it, but that provision has yet to be commenced.
The Irish Times reported this week how a woman had obtained a total of two 24-hour ancillary driving disqualification orders, thus avoiding having penalty points endorsed on her licence for using a mobile phone while driving and for not wearing a seat belt.
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Both disqualification orders were granted by Judge Desmond Zaidan at Naas District Court, the first last December and the second last month, following applications by the woman’s solicitor, Tim Kennelly, to re-enter proceedings involving his client.
The judge had previously granted 24-hour disqualification orders to a small number of other drivers.
A driver who reaches 12 penalty points must be disqualified from driving for six months, but section 2.8 of the Road Traffic Act 2002 has been used by a small number of drivers to avoid that.
The section means that when a person admits or is convicted of a penalty points offence and an ancillary disqualification order is made in respect of that offence then those points shall not be endorsed on the person’s driving licence.
The section does not specify a minimum period of disqualification for an ancillary order, which is discretionary, leaving it up to individual judges to decide whether to grant one.
On Wednesday a department spokesman said it and the Courts Service have been engaging on how the amending provisions of the 2024 Act “will work in practice”.
He said when penalty points were endorsed or a disqualification order made in court then the Courts Service told the department, which applied the sanctions on the National Driver File.
Since the penalty points system was introduced in 2002, penalty points could be applied or an ancillary disqualification made, but not both simultaneously, he said.
For ancillary disqualifications of fewer than six months, the 2024 Act makes it possible for both sanctions to be applied in respect of one offence.
Given the lack of historical overlap between the two sanction types, the Courts Service has to date told the department about penalty points and disqualifications through separate channels, he said.
It was for this reason the amending provisions of the 2024 Act have not yet been commenced, while the department and Courts Service “engaged on how the new system will work in practice”.
“Based on these deliberations, the department is now moving to commence the provisions to close this loophole in the coming weeks,” he said.
