DUBLIN, Ireland: Road safety campaigners believe that 1 in 4 motorists disqualified from driving by the courts last year are still on the road because the Department of Transport officials have not yet updated their records.
The warning comes as the total number of drivers banned from the roads in the Republic in 2025 rose by 11 percent to 12,144. This included 3,177 learner drivers, which is an increase of more than 1,200 from the previous year.
New figures from the Department of Transport show that 2,010 drivers who were banned after court cases have no details linked to their records in the National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF). This means about 23 percent of all drivers banned by courts last year cannot be properly tracked in the system.
In addition, records for 51 more drivers who were banned after getting too many penalty points could not be matched. In total, 2,061 drivers had bans that were not properly connected to a license holder in the NVDF. This includes drivers from Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Limerick, as well as some unknown or foreign drivers.
The data also show that nearly 1 in 5 drivers banned in 2025 were banned more than once that year. A total of 2,249 drivers were banned multiple times, including 28 who were banned eight or more times within 12 months.
More than 7,700 drivers who received penalty points in 2025 could not have these points added to their records either.
The NVDF is the main database used by gardaí during roadside checks to verify driver and vehicle details, including penalty points and bans. Each driver has a unique number that stays the same even when they get a new license.
However, when courts do not properly match ban notices to a driver's record, it becomes harder for gardaí to catch and prosecute people who continue to drive despite being banned.
Road safety group PARC said it has been raising this issue since 2013. Its chairperson, Susan Gray, said the problem often happens because drivers do not bring their license to court, so their unique driver number is not recorded.
The group is also worried that many banned drivers are not handing over their licenses as required by law. In fact, only 2,016 drivers — about 17 percent of those banned — gave their licenses to the Road Safety Authority.
Fine Gael TD Emer Currie said the number of unmatched records has stayed about the same over the past three years.
The figures also show that the number of drivers receiving penalty points increased by 12 percent in 2025, to 185,277, with over 19,100 more offenses detected than the previous year.
The Department of Transport said it created 9,770 temporary or "shell" records for drivers whose details could not be matched in the NVDF.
