New powers to allow gardai impound all untaxed or uninsured vehicles, including foreign-registered cars driven by non-residents of the State, will be brought in, the Minister of Transport has revealed.
Martin Cullen told The Irish Times the forthcoming Road Safety Bill would remove a gap in the law that had prevented foreign-registered vehicles from being impounded.
"The position at the moment is that the law only applies to vehicles registered in the State. To deal with this there is a bill coming in shortly in which I am going to change that law [so it applies] to all vehicles within the State, irrespective of whether or not they are registered," Mr Cullen said.
Mr Cullen said this was an issue he was "taking very seriously" and that he was keen to give gardaí the powers they required to impound all unregistered vehicles and ensure that all cars on the roads met the minimum standards as set out by the National Car Test (NCT).
Under the new law, which will be jointly enforced by Customs officers and gardaí, anyone importing a vehicle into the State will have until the end of the following working day to register the vehicle for VRT.
This in turn will lead to the vehicle being registered in the system for an NCT and will require the driver's licence to be produced. If the vehicle is not registered for VRT, it will be impounded.
Drivers found guilty of importing but not registering a vehicle will face fines, the extent of which have yet to be determined. The legislation will be introduced in the Dail before the summer, according to the Minister.
The Department of Transport said the move would target all uninsured, untaxed and unlicenced drivers within the State, and was not just focused on non nationals.
Mr Cullen made the decision after the extent of the problem was outlined by the Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy at a sitting of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport late last month.
The Garda Commissioner said the gap in the law had created a significant road safety problem which was being compounded by the level of alcohol consumption among some immigrant communities.
Mr Conroy said a three immigrants had recently died in car crash in which a "lot of alcohol had been consumed" prior to the crash. The National Safety Council has also highlighted a number of safety concerns facing non national drivers, particularly those from left-hand drive countries and states, like those in Eastern Europe, where the standard of driving test is comparatively lower than in Ireland.
More than 9,680 uninsured vehicles were seized last year by gardaí, close to the maximum possible given current constraints on storage space for seized vehicles. Vehicles have to be stored for six weeks.
An Garda Siochana is seeking additional storage spaces for impounded vehicles to allow it to seize a higher number uninsured and untaxed cars and, as part of this, the Garda car pound in Dublin is being extended.
A Department of Transport spokesman stressed that the new law was not designed to target cars owned by non-residents of the State but would include all unregistered vehicles sold at auction and purchased in the North but not registered. Cars brought into the state by holiday-makers will not be affected.
Speaking after a five-week period in which 50 people have been killed, including eight during a 24-hour period earlier this week, Minister Cullen said "the number of people being killed on the roads at the moment is appalling and unacceptable."
"We all have a collective societal responsibility to reduce road deaths and if we want to, we will do."
