Gardaí urged to ‘get tough’ over failure to register insurance details of thousands of vehicles

Insurance Ireland has called on An Garda Síochána to “get tough” with businesses and motor traders who have failed to register the insurance details of thousands of vehicles and drivers with a State-supported motor insurance database.

Legislation came into effect in November 2023 requiring fleet owners and motor traders to upload all such information to the National Fleet Database (NFD), which is available to road traffic policing units on their mobility devices at roadside checkpoints.

However, while 440,500 vehicles are listed on the database, 9,851 fleet or motor trader policies “are yet to provide vehicle details for the NFD”, according to Minister of State for Transport Seán Canney.

In a parliamentary reply to Fine Gael TD Emer Currie, Canney said fleet owners and motor traders are responsible for adding details to the NFD and they could face fines of up to €500 per vehicle.

The Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland has responsibility for the fleet database and for the overall Irish Motor Insurance Database (IMID). According to information it supplied to the Minister, driver numbers are missing for almost 25,000 named drivers, despite being a legal requirement since March 2025. Every motorist has a unique driver number on their licence which they keep for life.

Insurance Ireland chief executive Moyagh Murdock said getting fleet owners to comply “is down to enforcement at this point”. The organisation represents the insurance industry.

“I know the early days were probably a softly, softly approach to really familiarise everybody with it but there comes a point when they [gardaí] have to just get tough with them,” she said.

The Minster said fleet vehicles include buses, coaches, cars sold in garages, delivery vans, hire cars, construction vehicles, utility and service vehicles “as well as those operated by retailers, service providers, food and takeaway delivery operations, semi-State organisations” and individuals owning multiple vehicles.

Murdock said “we would definitely be worried because it’s the compliant drivers who are subsidising these guys that are not registering their vehicles”.

She said fleet operators “could have more vehicles than they have declared”, resulting in them being underinsured “and they’re getting away with not declaring all of their vehicles”.

She called for an enforcement campaign, which insurance companies would support and had done so in the past, through advertising campaigns and phone help desks to assist gardaí if they do not find a vehicle on their ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) system.

Susan Gray, of the Parc road safety campaign group, said she was “shocked” at the number of vehicles not registered on the fleet database three years after it became law.

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“I’m just as disappointed with the 25,000 driver numbers that have not been added,” she said, asking “does anybody follow up on these laws?”.

Gray said we are “15 years behind” the United Kingdom, which introduced a fleet database decades ago but in 2011 changed it to make the fleet owner legally responsible for insurance.

Currie said there is a “serious gap in a system gardaí rely on” to check insurance at the roadside.

She said the bureau had flagged this issue in February and called on the Minister for Transport to “publish a timetable for following up with operators who have yet to submit their vehicle details, and explain what steps are being taken with gardaí to enforce the law where operators continue to fail to comply”.

An Garda Síochána was contacted for comment.