Driving test applicants attempting to gain a licence fraudulently by impersonation will be prosecuted, said a senior Department of Transport official.
The warning came following a spate of false presentations at testing centres in the Dublin area by non-nationals recently.
Mr Pat Travers, the driving test supervisor for north Leinster, was speaking after a non-national man was given a four-month suspended sentence and a €300 fine by the Dublin District Court this week in what is believed to be the first conviction in the State for seeking to obtain a licence falsely.
Mr Travers said the man, believed to be from an African country, had been scheduled to sit his driving test in the Finglas testing centre on July 3rd, 2002.
However the tester on the day, Mr Noel Butler, suspected the man who presented himself for testing was not the same as the person pictured in the provisional licence.
Mr Butler went ahead with the test, but as the car left the centre, he believed he spotted the man who was the test applicant pictured on the provisional licence, in the car park.
After the test, Mr Butler, on the advice of Mr Travers, withheld the licence and asked the man to return with further identification before he would be given the certificate of competency.
The man agreed he would return with identification on the following Friday, July 5th. The person who returned on this date, was not the man who had sat the test, Mr Butler said, but the original applicant and holder of the provisional licence.
Mr Butler told Mr Travers he was sure of this, as he had taken note during the hand signal section of the test that the man was missing a finger, while the man who presented himself at the centre on July 5th was not.
Mr Travers said that while the department was not an enforcement agency, they could not tolerate fraudulent test sittings and the Garda would be informed where such cases of cheating were suspected.
"In the climate of penalty points the full rigours of the law will have to be applied to people who try to get a licence falsely. The gardaí have indicated they will be prepared to take more of these cases in the future now a precedent had been set."
Mr Travers said there had been the occasional problem with impersonation prior to the addition of the photograph to licences in 1989. The issue had rarely arisen since, that is until recently.
"In the last 12 months we've had a number of cases, at least 10, where the person presenting for the test was not the person pictured on the licence. When challenged to prove another form of identification they have said they will get something from the car, but never return."
Mr Travers said all the cases in the last 12 months had been in the greater Dublin area and had involved non-national applicants.
