NEW: Penalty Points on a Company Car: What Happens If You Don't Know Who Was Driving?

Your Company Car Was Caught Speeding. But Nobody Knows Who Was Driving. What Happens Next?

Picture this: you’re the boss of a transport company in Kilkenny. You have 5 trucks. You employ 6 or 7 drivers. All are insured to drive your vehicles at work. There’s a reasonably high turnover of staff. It’s hard to get good drivers to stay.  

Your employees are on the road a lot, mostly driving over and back from Rosslare.  

And some of them drive a little fast. After all, they’re driving the boss’ truck, so who cares right?

"The [static speed camera] in Glenmore began operations in May 2025.

By June 2026 it had issued over 30,000 fines.

If all those fines were paid, that one camera would have made

over €5m for the State, in less than a year"

Margins are tight and you need your guys on the road all the time. There never seems to be enough hours in the day.  

You’ve told your secretary that if fixed charge notices for driving offences arrive, just pay them.

The last thing you need is to waste a day in court dealing with a summons for an unpaid fixed charge. After all you’re a careful driver and you don’t drive too fast, mostly.

One day your secretary happens to mention that she’s paid two more fixed penalty notices. “Strange’, you think. “I didn’t get stopped by a Garda recently”.

You decide to contact the NDLS to see how many points are on your licence. To your amazement they tell you that have 9!

Sure, you knew you had gotten one about a month ago -your first ever fine- but that would only give you 3 points.

Worse, these all happened within the last two months. Because they stay on your licence for 3 years, you now have to be extremely careful of the next 2 and a half years.

You already know that if you get12 points in a 3-year period you’ll be disqualified for 6-months.  

What happened?

What happens if a company car is caught speeding?

Time was you’d be caught by a Garda doing a speed check at the side of the road. At least you were aware of that and might be able to have a conversation with them. With any luck the Garda might even have left you off with a “caution”.

But that world is changing fast.

Because you’re based in the southeast you’ve more than likely encountered the new static speed cameras that the Gardai have installed along roads in certain counties since May 2025.

Or rather some of your employees have.

These new cameras are located in Kilkenny, Carlow, Waterford and Wexford.

Speed vans are relatively easy to spot. There’s about 58 of them spread right around the country since 2013. We’re all familiar with them.

And Ireland being Ireland, you’ll likely be made aware of them by motorists flashing their headlights at you as you approach them.

But static speed cameras are a new phenomenon. There’s only 9 of them nationwide and most of these were installed between March and May 2025. Almost half were installed in May 2025 alone. For people like you who live and work between Kilkenny and Wexford, here’s where they are:

R772 Wexford (Arklow Rd), N80 Carlow (between Barristown & Levitstown), N25 Kilkenny (between Glenmore & Luffany).

You barely notice these things standing sentry-like at the side of the road.

But they’re highly effective. They don’t stop you to talk to you before issuing you a ticket.

In fact, many people don’t even realise they even got a ticket until a few weeks later. And like all technology you can’t reason with them. They don’t care.

They are extremely effective.

The one in Glenmore began operations in May 2025. By June 2026 it had issued over 30,000 fines. If all those fines were paid, that one camera would have made over €5m for the State, in less than a year.

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In the last week two business owners contacted me about penalty points situations.

Both owned a fleet of vehicles, both had employees who were insured to drive their vehicles and both owners started getting fixed charge notices for speeding due to static speed cameras.

One paid them all, accumulated 12 points and received a letter advising him he would be disqualified from driving within a few weeks.

In another, the infamous static speed camera on the N25 at Glenmore had accounted for 3 separate speeding offences for one employer.

He freely admitted that he had been responsible for one of these but was not responsible for the other 2. Neither did he know which employee had driven the vehicle in question for the other 2 speeding offences.

His office had paid the fines. Then he realised that he had racked up 9 points in little over a month. If he picked up 3 more points within the next 3 years, he’d go off the road for 6 months.

He told me he had written to the Fixed Charge Office. He wanted to try to get a visual identification of the driver for the 2 disputed fixed charge notices. I told him that he was wasting his time for 2 reasons:

Firstly, he had paid the fines, so this was an admission -as far as the law was concerned- that he was responsible for them.

Besides, once you have paid the fine, they cannot be appealed. After all the form that you get advising you of the fixed notice offence gives you the opportunity to nominate another driver if it wasn’t you. He had not done this. He just paid them.

Secondly the fixed charge office would write -if requested- to the registered owner and provide an image of the registration plate of the vehicle, but never a picture of the driver.

As far as the law is concerned, the registered owner should always know who is driving their vehicle.

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So, what does this mean?

It means that small and medium business owners around the country need to immediately have a new policy in the workplace for all vehicles that employees have access to.

Nobody can drive the vehicle without first clearing it with someone at work, no matter how short the journey.

The days of simply hopping into the boss’ car “for a short spin” needs to end.  

What if nobody knows who was driving the company vehicle?

You need to carefully document who is driving the vehicle at all times, so you know who is responsible for any traffic offence.

But from a practical point of view this is also an urgent priority for you.

As the registered owner, you’re responsible for the vehicle. What if an employee, someone who was unreliable, drove the vehicle, knocked someone down and kept driving?

They might have no incentive to come clean.

What if it took the Gardai two or three days to trace the vehicle, by which time a dozen or more employees had driven the vehicle since?

As the employer, what would happen to you?

"Judge Carroll told the employer that she could not understand

how any employer could not identify which one of their staff

were driving their vehicles at all times"

You would be required by law to tell the Gardai who was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident.

And if you couldn’t?

At the very least you would be prosecuted for allowing someone to drive your vehicle who was uninsured to do so.  

That carries a 2-year disqualification from driving.

And worse. What if the driver was never located, or if confronted refused to admit they had ben driving? Would your insurance cover you if you were sued by the person knocked down?

Yes, if the driver was known to be an employee of yours, but maybe not if the driver was never identified.

After all, your insurance covers you and your employees, not some unknown third party.

I was in court some time ago where just such a case appeared before Judge Joanne Carroll in Macroom.

A small business owner had received two fixed charge notices.

He claimed that despite carrying out enquires in his company he could not identify the driver for both offences, so that he could nominate them to take the points.

He did not pay the fixed notices and received summonses to appear in court.

Judge Carroll told the employer that she could not understand how any employer could not identify which one of their staff were driving their vehicles at all times.

So, put a policy in place and make sure you can identify who is driving at all times.

And make sure you tell your secretary not to blindly pay these notices without discussing them with you.

After all, it’s your licence that’s on the line.