Anyone who opens a bank or post office account must first produce detailed evidence of identity – including passport, driving licence, utility bill and PPS number.
But any motorist who is registering ownership of a car need only supply minimal information in the form of little more than a name and contact address. No further evidence of identity is needed and the Vehicle Registration Office (VRO), it seems, does little checking.
In the case of bank accounts, detailed identity disclosure is necessary to prevent money laundering and fraud. But in the case of vehicle registration, the limited disclosure requirement has a perverse effect.
The combination of little disclosure and lax oversight serve to facilitate law breaking and, effectively, to ensure immunity from prosecution. This can happen where a driver, who has committed a road traffic offence, has either intentionally or accidentally submitted the wrong contact details to the VRO. Because the State is then unable to find the offender, the driver manages to escape detection and prosecution.
District Court Judge William Hamill – one of Ireland's longest serving judges – outlined the scale of the problem in an address to the Law Reform Commission last week. He revealed that 142,521 motoring related warrants remain unexecuted across all parts of the justice system.
In 2011 and 2012 the cost to the State in unpaid – and uncollected – fine revenues was €7.4 million. As Judge Hamill pointed out: “In all these matters the honest are dealt with and the dishonest, or at least the very careless, usually escape.”
Why does it take a judge to highlight such an obvious deficiency in the vehicle registration system – one so apparent for so long? And why has neither the Department of Transport nor the Road Safety Authority addressed the issue? The solution is both simple and obvious.
As Judge Hamill has suggested: the evidence of identity requirements for registering a vehicle should be brought into line with the far stricter requirements for opening a bank account. That, as he said, would “improve the situation beyond recognition”.