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THE GOVERNMENT HAS approved formal drafting of new bills that will end the need for paper tax discs and also “streamline” information on road traffic collisions.
Cabinet has approved the drafting of the National Vehicle and Driver File Bill 2024, which includes provisions to abolish the requirement to display a motor tax disc.
A spokesperson from the Department of Transport noted that gardaí already have immediate digital access to motor tax information and the new bill will “get rid of a now unnecessary validation of tax compliance”.
Currently, motorists are legally required to display their motor tax disc to drive in a public place.
The legislation will also strengthen GDPR for access to vehicle and driver data and remove the end date of declarations of non-use of a motor vehicle.
The National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF) is the central register of vehicles and drivers and is widely used by state agencies, including the Road Safety Authority and An Garda Síochána, for a variety of road safety purposes.
Meanwhile, the Roads Bill 2024 will allow the “flow of information so that local authorities may request, receive, and process road collision data from both the RSA and An Garda Síochána.
A department spokesperson said this data will enable local authorities, in their role as road authorities, to target areas where collisions are more prone to occur with investment and infrastructure.
The spokesperson added that it’s hoped this new legislation will support the delivery of the Government’s Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030 targets of reducing fatalities on Irish roads by 50% by the end of this decade.
The Government also has a “Vision Zero” target of no deaths or serious injuries on Irish roads by 2050.
Speaking after the meeting of Government today, Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said the flow of collision data to local authorities will be an “important tool in reducing the terrible trend of rising road fatalities”.
He said this “builds on the important work we are already undertaking in response to accidents on our roads”.
Ryan added that the NVDF Bill will provide a more data-secure underpinning for the national vehicle driver file.
He also remarked that the Bill will modernise the motor tax system and “get rid of the need for paper discs on our windscreens, in line with most other European countries”.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Transport James Lawless said every life lost on Irish roads is one too many, and that the Roads Bill will “strengthen our response to the trends that unfortunately so many of our citizens have been impacted by”.
He added that the NVDF Bill is a “natural next step towards modernising our systems and improving outcomes for citizens”.
“Using technology to allow digital versions of tax discs will provide for a paperless system, being convenient for motorists and more efficient all round,” said Lawless.
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In fairness I very rarely have issues with Vodafone broadband.
@John Sheahan: me either. Had a short outage in County Wex earlier. It’s back now.
Vodafone are brilliant. 1 minor issue and the big spoilt boys and girls have a melt down because they can’t watch the toyshow. FFS, if that’s your biggest issue then life ain’t 1/2 bad.
@Santa: totally agree, very rarely are there any issues with their service
@Santa: Minor issue? I was an hour on h old waiting for customer service during which my 2 kids were asking every 5 minutes when will the WiFi be back. I was a Virgin media customer and never had these problems.
@Bramer: what a life and death situation you were in I hope things worked out for you with this serious first world problem
@Bramer: yes its minor and the more people who ring them the longer their response times.
Just don’t bother with the RTE player. Awful app but the adds play perfectly.
@tottkingham: vpn mate. No ads. Works beautifully along with bbc iPlayer all 4 and itv, netflix most radio players to on your phone.
Do yourself a favor. Vpn.
@De Green Parrot: which vpn app do you use?
@tottkingham: or use brave. Best out of the box ad blocking browser.
Absolutely shocking service from Vodafone tonight. But to be honest very poor service from them in general recently. After 20 years I’m Seriously considering whether or not to continue with this crowd of changers
@Johnny Casey: I think one outage or issue in 20 years is fairly good service, no?
@Johnny Casey: are you having a meltdown because you’re going to miss late late toy show
@Mary OGorman McGuire: I spent three weeks without my broadband. They sent an engineer to check the outside line TWICE in a week to check the outside line and the line into the house. Booth times he told them lines were fine, faulty modem. Took my parent modem (as I needed it for work) which worked perfectly, then spent another 6weeks arguing to get a new modem sent. I wouldn’t call that great!! My modem was 5 yrs old. Hardly required about 50 phone calls and paying an engineer for two visits (who looked completely baffled on his second visit)
@Johnny Casey: yeah, frequent outages here recently too, affecting my ability to work.
@Johnny Casey: with them 20 plus years, to be fair these situations don’t happen very often with Vodafone and I live in an area with no broadband only Wi-Fi
@Johnny Casey: get on digiweb. Vodafone is a joke.
@De Green Parrot: Dodgyweb are rubbish, those Fritzbox routers are a joke along with their support, logged a business support call and still waiting for a response. Its far longer now than the 72 hours they claim and they have ignored subsequent update requests.
Its back working so they did their job much thanks.
With them 4 years, this is the first issue I’ve had with them, siht happens though doesn’t it? Some serious First World Problem people on the Vodafone Twitter account today! It’s grand now again anyway.
If you’re able to, change your DNS settings in your router to something like Google’s: 8.8.8.8 for primary and 8.8.1.1 for secondary. If you don’t know how to do this then wait for Vodafone to resolve the issue I guess. This fixed it for me though.
@Limited Edition: I changed to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Works fine…. Though connections slightly slower.
Did anyone actually read the 2nd last sentence? Lol
@Frank Flanagan: wait until you read the 23rd, it’s a doozy
I’m with them over 20 years and outages happen but very rarely!
Now it makes sense! In fairness generally super service from Vodafone!
Well mine keeps dropping every hour during work so it’s not the best but at least it has very few outages.
We were out for a couple of hours, but in fairness this is 1st time having a problem
@яα¢нєℓ: 5 yrs using Vodafone TV & Internet. three outages, one pre-notification email sent for 6 hr outage (was back in 4 ) 3 years ago. One this Tues for 1hr and the longer one today. Generally very good service, have used in 2 households (we carried our service over/ seamless transfer)
Change your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 on your device, that will fix it until Vodafone resolve it. Don’t forget to set back to auto after Vodafone fix it.
They had a deadline and hit it so fair play. Would have been a disaster otherwise. I’m with VM and I was without internet for about 5 days recently and I work from home. No other option where I’m living.
I had vodafone gigabit broadband installed yesterday, only started the contract today so I was thinking crap, I shouldn’t have changed providers. I read through the instructions and, I guess as well as the outage today, the guy that installed the fibre used the wrong cable from the router to the modem. Great first impression.
@Laura Halpenny: I just got rid of vodafone gigabit. Every night between 7-11 The speed dropped to 10mb from 1000. Foght my way out of the contract only with them for 2 months. Anyway. With digiweb now. All good. But never again will I go near vodafone. Weeks of telling them the same story and they keep telling me it’s on my end.
@Laura Halpenny: The gigabit service is SIRO. the modem is installed at wall at entry to the fibre cable and has a separate power cable that plugs in to closest socket. Its a standard LAN cable connecting that to the router. Amazing they messed that up
@De Green Parrot: Are you an ad for digiweb?
@John Murray: hi john…I looked at the instructions after and for the gigabit one you have to install the WAN cable from the LAN port on the router – he should’ve read the instructions- I did lol
I received a call from Vodafone customer service yesterday to send me out a brand new Huawei P40 pro, they just wanted me to call out my IBAN number to them over the phone before they could send it on to me..
They sent me a text while talking to verify its them…what does anyone think of this ?
I don’t have sky so while internet down stuck with rte
Ppl still use Vodafone?
Seriously, why?
Can’t complain about Vodafone never had problem before tonight.
have your say