Gardai get power to seize foreign cars

Eru

Gardai have had the power to impound foreign vehicles for donkeys. Its called Section 140, Finance Act 1996. The problem with it is we are impounding them purely so customs and tax inspectors can get their hands on them. The Gardai dont have an active role after seizure. The new act will grant us powers for foreign cars that we have for Irish under Section 41, Road traffic Act 1961/2002. (this is seizure for no insurance displayed or tax expired 3 or more months or if the driver is too young to have a license)

Despite what is being said here there is no time limit on when a car can be seized. The requirment is that the Gardai must have reason to believe the car has been imported on a permanent basis. If you bring a car to Ireland and you intend to live here then you actually only have 24 hours to register that vehicle. If your a tourist you have 1 year and if your here on a temporary living basis you have 6 months.

The problem is figuring out who is here as a tourist and who is not. Registration plates are not taken on arrival, would be great if they were but how long would it take to get out of the port?

Another problem is that foreign nationals are selling and buying foreign cars in Ireland without registering them and in some cases buying Irish cars and placing foreign registration plates on these cars. All this is illegal but how do you prove it at present?

The impound fee in Santry and Parkgate Street (not Phoenix park) is 135 euro on impound (first 24 hours inc) and 35 euro per day thereafter. They are sold or scrapped after 6 months if not claimed (in theory but usually longer) but if the owner signs a waiver they can be scrapped straight away.

so please, before commenting please research and know the facts. We Gardai know fully well what our powers are but reality, time and resources often conflict.

alias no.9

Karlitosway1978 wrote:

Registration plates are not taken on arrival, would be great if they were but how long would it take to get out of the port?

The ferry companies take all registrations. How difficult could it be to introduce legislation requiring that that information be shared?

Eru

In what way Alias? That this information be entered into a computer system that the Gardai have access too? Yeah that may work but is the car coming and going on a regular basis?

What would that tell us? That the car is here but we know that already, what we dont know is the reason and its the reason that defines our actions.

The point if this law is so when a tourist is stopped he must produce a valid insurance policy to the Gardai, if he fails we seize even if he is just a tourist or claiming to be one. At the moment a touist can look at me and say "I have no insurance, Im not insured in Spain/France/etc" and there is sweet FA can be done about it.

Are these the people you want driving our roads?

Victor

MercMad wrote:

Foreign insurance companies are prevented from entering the Irish market for many reasons, one being that the cover given is not as comprehensive as we have. (Yeah we all know the REAL reason)

Yeah, because its the same insurance companies in those countries also. :v:

tj-music.com

Karlitosway1978 wrote:

Another problem is that foreign nationals are selling and buying foreign cars in Ireland without registering them and in some cases buying Irish cars and placing foreign registration plates on these cars. All this is illegal but how do you prove it at present?

How do you know? I actually think that "Irish nationals" as well as "foreign nationals" are to be watched. Your thread is quite racist at times, it is mostly Irish people who offer me drugs near the city centre or near some flat complexes - do you think that is o.k. because they are Irish?

Strange way to be looking at things

boardy

tj-music.com wrote:

How do you know? I actually think that "Irish nationals" as well as "foreign nationals" are to be watched. Your thread is quite racist at times, it is mostly Irish people who offer me drugs near the city centre or near some flat complexes - do you think that is o.k. because they are Irish?

Strange way to be looking at things

I don't see where his thread (posts) is racist. In fact, his posts are quite informative as it gives us a law enforcement perspective on the issue.

alias no.9

Karlitosway1978 wrote:

In what way Alias? That this information be entered into a computer system that the Gardai have access too? Yeah that may work but is the car coming and going on a regular basis?

What would that tell us? That the car is here but we know that already, what we dont know is the reason and its the reason that defines our actions.

You said and I quote:

Karlitosway1978 wrote:

Registration plates are not taken on arrival, would be great if they were but how long would it take to get out of the port?

My point is that this information is recorded and that it does not require any further work by anyone to record this information and there would be no delays anywhere, it is only a matter of being able to access the information.

Our man in Havana

The civil liberities people would oppose such sharing of information.

Eru

boardy wrote:

I don't see where his thread (posts) is racist. In fact, his posts are quite informative as it gives us a law enforcement perspective on the issue.

Thank you Boardy. the reason I speak of foreign nationals and not Irish is because A, this thread is about FOREIGN vehicles and B, Irish people do not possess foreign registration plates.

Typical response, racist. Why? Because Im a Garda or because I know some foreign nationals are abusing the loopholes.

I see no reason why I should speak about Irish drug dealers in this thread however I do see your reason for discussing it. RAR take a bow.

As for the ferry, yes I think sharing this information would be of benefit however its not as straight forward as you think. Thats what I was suggesting. It would only tell us when the person entered the state which while helpful would not be enough on its own unless you were to grant full coming and going history. Again you have a problem with logistics in this regard.

MrPudding

Karlitosway1978 wrote:

Again you have a problem with logistics in this regard.

Arse. If there is a will to do it then it could be done. Civil liberties issues aside how hard would it actually be?

As far as I can see the only difficult part would be with getting the information for cars entering Northern Ireland.

If the ferrys are providing information on cars arriving then why the hell would they not provide information on them leaving? That does not make sense.

There are a number of ways the information could be gathered. This is not really time sensitive information. It is merely a record of when a vehicle entered the country and when it left. Therefore it does not need to be transmitted in real time. License plate info could be uploaded every evening or perhaps even every week.

Technically this is not a difficult issue. I think the difficulties will come form actually getting agreement from the ferry companies to provide the information.

Of course if the Gardai were actually interested in doing something about what they say is a huge problem then they should be lobbying the government to have legislation put in place to compell the ferry companies to provide the info.

I think there is an element of lazyness here. Several posters have mentioned cases where they have spoken to the gardai and been told it is not worth the hassle to try to find the foreign reg drivers. I understand it could be difficult to track them down but to have our police force saying it is not "worth the hassle" to try to find people that are breaking the law is shamefull.

MrP