International licence / Irish licence

Tusky

A friend of mine had a query for me and I couldn't answer it so thought I'd put it to boards.

They are Argentinian and have a full Argentinian/international licence for about seven years. They moved to Ireland 18 months ago and now needs an Irish licence.

Do they have to do the theory test, 12 lessons and full test in order to get one? Seems mental. Can understand the tests but the lessons seems overkill.

dennyk

Yes, they will need to take the theory test, obtain a learner's permit, take the 12 EDT lessons, and then sit their road test to obtain a full Irish license. Argentina is not one of the countries with which Ireland has an exchange agreement. The only requirement that they can avoid is the six-month waiting period to take the road test after obtaining their learner's permit, although given the time required to do the EDT lessons and the current delays in scheduling driving tests (waiting times often average three or four months and can be as long as five or six months in some cases), that may be academic anyway.

They should also be aware that while they hold an Irish learner's permit, they are technically required to abide by all of the restrictions associated with it when driving here, including having an accompanying driver who has held a full Irish (or other EU) license for at least two years in the car with them at all times, displaying L plates, and not driving on motorways. It might have been a bit of a grey area if they'd just moved here, but at this point they are well past the 12-month period for which you are allowed to drive here on a foreign license, so legally they can't be driving here at all on their Argentina license now in any case.

Tusky

dennyk wrote: »

Yes, they will need to take the theory test, obtain a learner's permit, take the 12 EDT lessons, and then sit their road test to obtain a full Irish license. Argentina is not one of the countries with which Ireland has an exchange agreement. The only requirement that they can avoid is the six-month waiting period to take the road test after obtaining their learner's permit, although given the time required to do the EDT lessons and the current delays in scheduling driving tests (waiting times often average three or four months and can be as long as five or six months in some cases), that may be academic anyway.

They should also be aware that while they hold an Irish learner's permit, they are technically required to abide by all of the restrictions associated with it when driving here, including having an accompanying driver who has held a full Irish (or other EU) license for at least two years in the car with them at all times, displaying L plates, and not driving on motorways. It might have been a bit of a grey area if they'd just moved here, but at this point they are well past the 12-month period for which you are allowed to drive here on a foreign license, so legally they can't be driving here at all on their Argentina license now in any case.

Thanks for the detailed reply. That's a bummer. Will the track record of paying insurance/no claims abroad count towards insurance quote here do you know?

dennyk

Most likely not, unfortunately; I don't know of any insurer who would accept a no-claims history from Argentina. He can ask around, but even Liberty only accepts histories from a few non-EU countries (US, Canada, Australia, and NZ) as far as I know. He may be stuck paying new driver rates, so he'll need to take that into account when budgeting for insurance and looking for a car to buy. (Ideally he'll want something no more than 5 years old and definitely no more than 10, with as small an engine as possible, to minimize the premiums, but he'll likely still be looking at a few grand a year or more...). If he resides with someone here who has a car (e.g. a spouse) and can add him as a named driver to their own auto policy, that would help reduce the cost as well.

If he wants to get started on his lessons before buying a car, he can always drive the instructor's car for those; he won't need his own insurance for that, as instructors will have commercial insurance on the cars they use that covers their students. Some instructors will also hire out cars to take the driving test, with insurance included. If he hasn't been driving for a while now, though, he may need more practice than the 12 hours of lessons will provide in order to get up to test standard, so that approach might require buying additional lessons if he doesn't have his own car that he can drive in between the EDT lessons and before the test.

Marcusm

Tusky wrote: »

A friend of mine had a query for me and I couldn't answer it so thought I'd put it to boards.

They are Argentinian and have a full Argentinian/international licence for about seven years. They moved to Ireland 18 months ago and now needs an Irish licence.

Do they have to do the theory test, 12 lessons and full test in order to get one? Seems mental. Can understand the tests but the lessons seems overkill.

Does he/she realise that the Argentinian license is not valid for driving in Ireland after 12 months and thus they need to get a learner’s permit ASAP and be accompanied until they pass the test?