Gardaí crack down on uninsured drivers by using new database to seize 1,600 vehicles a month

Ellen O'Donoghue

A legal requirement for motorists to provide their driver numbers when applying for insurance is being credited with more detections of uninsured drivers.

More than 16,000 vehicles were seized in the first 10 months of last year, after insurers were required to record driver numbers on the national insurance system, the Irish Independent reported on Monday.

That is an average of 1,600 vehicles seized by gardaí every month after they gained access to the real-time insurance data.

The change has strengthened the motor insurance database, allowing gardaí to instantly verify cover at the roadside.

This makes it harder for uninsured drivers to avoid detection, with penalties including fines, penalty points, and court appearances.

Conor Faughnan, independent motoring expert for Carzone, told Newstalk that the database makes it harder for uninsured drivers to go under the radar.

"All of those numbers are then shared with the garda database, and it means that so the gardaí will know not only that this car is insured, but who is insured to drive it. One of the easiest ways to deceive insurance prior to this new system is you could have a mother or father insured on the car and the son driving it, it looks as if the car has insurance, but the driver does not," Mr Faughnan said.

He also said, however, that there is still work to do to crack down on insurance fraud, and the technology was a long time coming.

"As I say, it’s encouraging, but I’d always be reluctant to declare victory. If you think about fraud in all its forms, it has always been with us, and I’m afraid insurance fraud and refusal to pay insurance has been with us for a long time as well, so that problem’s going to stay with us, but at least it isn’t as ridiculously easy as it used to be.

"Whenever a registration plate passes by a garda car, that ANPR technology in the garda car can automatically check the number plate against the insurance database, and while insurance fraud is still possible, it’s much much harder, it means that you cannot simply get into a car that doesn’t have insurance, and drive on the roads, you will be seen and you will be caught," Mr Faughnan said.

Figures in the Irish Independent from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau of Ireland showed that more than 4.2 million driver numbers are now on the system.