{"id":133429,"date":"2025-10-20T07:17:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/133429\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T07:17:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:17:06","slug":"gardai-now-empowered-to-issue-fines-for-hard-to-read-licence-plates-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/133429\/","title":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed now empowered to issue fines for hard-to-read licence plates \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garda\u00ed will from this week be able to issue fixed charge notices (FCNs) for licence plate offences.<\/p>\n

An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na<\/a> press office confirmed the issuing of notices \u201ccan now be facilitated by the Garda Mobility App\u201d.<\/p>\n

The move follows the passage of the 2023 Road Safety Act, which included penalties for drivers who do not comply with the law on appropriate front and back licence registration plates, including colour, shape, design and font.<\/p>\n

Regulations were signed in May last year by then minister for transport Eamon Ryan but the ICT system on the Garda mobility app had to be upgraded to allow for the automatic issuing of fines from the app. <\/p>\n

Road safety campaign group Parc highlighted the issue after a member of the public contacted them with concerns about \u201cthe number of grey number plates and dangerous drivers\u201d, according to its chairwoman Susan Gray. \u201cWhen she reported it to the garda\u00ed, they continually told her they could not do anything about illegal number plates\u201d because of the ICT system, Ms Gray said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Fine Gael Dublin West TD Emer Currie raised the issue at an Oireachtas Transport Committee meeting attended by senior garda\u00ed, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) and Ms Gray. <\/p>\n

Ms Currie questioned why it had not been implemented and whether illegal number plates \u201cinterfere with automatic number plate recognition or speed camera vans\u201d. Garda Deputy Commissioner Dr Shawna Coxon told her there had been an issue in the past \u201cbut currently there is none\u201d. <\/p>\n

It subsequently emerged that as of this week, Garda mobility apps have been facilitated to issue the \u20ac60 penalty. Non-payment of the fine results in an automatic court summons.<\/p>\n

Ms Gray said she was \u201cdelighted that a law … passed 2\u00bd years ago has finally been incorporated into the Garda\u2019s IT systems to allow garda\u00ed on the ground to automatically issue fixed charge notices at the roadside via their mobility devices\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland ranked seventh in Europe for number of road deaths in 2024 amid \u2018alarming rise\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ms Currie said she was pleased penalties and summonses for illegal number plates can now be issued. \u201cGood legislation was passed … to make roads policing more productive and efficient, to clamp down on instances where drivers might evade automatic number plate recognition, but it wasn\u2019t implemented. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been chasing the Minister for Justice on this for months, and a week after raising it at the Oireachtas Transport Conmittee, it has been dealt with. It makes you question if our departments and agencies are working together as effectively as they should.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oireachtas transport committee chairman Michael Murphy said it was a \u201cserious enforcement gap since 2023 … it\u2019s such a significant loophole and there are so many loopholes out there undermining road traffic enforcement\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, he welcomed the \u201cpositive\u201d development \u201cbecause there is a public safety issue around incorrect or obscured registration plates\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed will from this week be able to issue fixed charge notices (FCNs) for licence plate offences. An…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,24001,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,4766,11697,79877,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-133429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-department-of-transport","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-oireachtas","24":"tag-road-safety","25":"tag-road-safety-authority","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}