Holders of American driving licences may drive in Ireland for up to a year, on a visitor basis, under international road traffic conventions.
Under EU law, we may issue a driving licence only to a person who is normally resident here. If a person has not taken up residence, we cannot issue them with a licence.
Where a person from a non-EU country takes up residence in Ireland, there are two possibilities. If the person holds their licence from a country with which we have a bilateral agreement on exchange of driving licences, they may exchange their licence for the Irish equivalent. If their licence is issued by a country with which we do not have an exchange agreement, they are treated as a learner and must go through the driver learning process.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA), as the body responsible for driver licensing, has explored the possibility of an exchange arrangement with the US. However, American driver licensing operates at State rather than Federal level, with 50 different driver licensing systems, with widely varying standards. Arranging exchange would require 50 separate agreements, each of which would have to take account of the arrangements between that State and each of the other 49, and the RSA found that this was not feasible.
Driver licensing exists so that we can have some guarantee of the qualifications of people permitted to drive on our roads. Exchange arrangements are made only after detailed comparison of the two licensing regimes, so that both sides can be sure that they are compatible. Given the range of the driver licensing systems in the US and their interrelations, this is unfortunately not possible at present.
