A Limerick-based motorist has been allocated penalty points 14 months after he was caught speeding. It comes as a survey of Dublin motorists claims 86 per cent believe the system is fair.
The Limerick motorist committed the speeding offence on June 17th 2003. He was caught by a fixed, or gatso, camera and subsequently received a fine by post.
"I visited Henry St Garda Station in Limerick and paid the fine on July 17th 2003," said the motorist. "There I was told that my licence would be endorsed with two points.
"I heard nothing more until last month when, on August 3rd, I got a letter from the Department of Transport informing me that the endorsement on my licence would not take effect until August 23rd - 14 months after the offence. The endorsement is to remain on my licence for three years from this date."
At present for fixed camera offences, a garda must collect the films from the cameras, go through them, and write out the tickets.
This information is then sent to SWS, a firm in Cork contracted by the Department of Transport to match details of offences with individual driver files. The department claims this process takes one week.
When the information is matched, it is sent to the Department of the Environment in Shannon, where within two days a letter of notification is issued to the driver. It seems the delay with the Limerick motorist's points arose with the gardaí.
The Government claims its new computerised system will dramatically speed up the processing of points, reduce the time it takes gardaí to process points and allow non-gardaí to issue speeding tickets based on photographic evidence.
However, with fixed cameras, the changes will occur only when the Road Traffic Bill is enacted, allowing private firms to operate the cameras and issue tickets.
The Bill was due to be have been discussed in the Oireachtas before the summer recess, but is now likely to be considered in the autumn sitting.
Last month a Dublin motorist told The Irish Times how she had got notice of 12 points from a single fixed camera over a one-month period but didn't learn about the first offence until she had already incurred enough points to put her off the road.
At the time, the Minister of State for Transport, Dr Jim McDaid, warned that with the additional provisions which could incur penalty points in the future, a motorist could acquire 12 penalty points in one day.
According to a spokesperson for the Department of Transport, there are no plans to introduce a set period for informing motorists of the points they have incurred.
"However, the Minister, Mr Brennan, is aware of the recent incidents of delays highlighted. He has raised his concerns with the gardaí and asked that there isn't a repeat," she said.
Mr Brennan will be heartened by a survey of 400 Dublin motorists, which found 86 per cent of them believed the penalty points system to be fair.
But when asked to elaborate on their opinion, several respondents complained that everyone gets the same penalty regardless of their speed. A number of motorists also pointed out that the enforcement of the speed limits is really only confined to high volume busy urban roads, whereas the majority of serious accidents continue to occur on smaller rural roads.
In the survey, carried out by the RAC, awareness of the government's plans to convert to metric speed limits was high, but when asked to convert 70 km/h into mph, only 15 per cent of motorists got close to the correct answer (43.5mph).