The motor insurance database available to gardaí will be expanded to include commercial fleet and motor trade vehicles "next week", Assistant Garda Commissioner Paula Hillman has said.
Ms Hillman was speaking after the new system was formally launched.
Gardaí can now check the insurance status of a vehicle by checking its registration on the Garda Mobility app - which pings if a motor insurance offence is disclosed.
More than 1,800 private vehicles were seized last month over having no insurance.
It follows a change in the law and the signing of an agreement between An Garda Síochána and the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland (MIBI), which now provides gardaí with the insurance details of over three million vehicles operating via the Irish Motor Insurance Database.
The database which feeds into the garda app currently only includes private vehicles.
Speaking on RTÉ's Drivetime, Paula Hillman said the project was started in phases.
"We did the private drivers first and that phase for the fleet owners and motor traders that's going to start next week," she said.
"Next week, the data’s going to be shared with us, we’ll start testing it and then rolling it out to firstly our Roads Policing members and then right across An Garda Síochána," Ms Hillman added.
She said that "at the minute 13,000 gardaí have access to this information on their app, so that's coming next week".
Ms Hillman said the project took time as "it was an ongoing".
"It did take leglisation and that leglisation came through and then the data sharing arrangements," she said.
"The project's ongoing because we're moving into the second stage of getting the fleet database, so we’ll have the fleet vehicles as well," she added.
Ms Hillman said gardaí could still check the information using methods available before the app.
She said she did not "have to hand" data on uninsured commercial vehicle drivers.
However, she said this was something that could be looked at by analysts.
Regarding criticism about enforcement, Ms Hillman said gardaí are "out daily carrying out that enforcement".
She said: "We detect every hour 14 drivers speeding in excess the speed limit.
"We detect two people using their mobile phones every hour."
Ms Hillman said gardaí are detecting offences including "speeding, mobile phone use and drinking/ drug drivers".
On the number of people who faced prosecutions for mobile phone use while driving in the last year, she said: "It was in the region of 14,000".
Ms Hillman said that before gardaí had access to the data provided by the app "900-1,000 vehicles per month were detected as uninsured.
She said now that figure stood at "1,800 people".
She said this showed that sharing data "allows us to be really effective".
Earlier, the PARC road safety group, which helps those affected by serious road traffic collisions, had called for the database to be expanded to include commercial and motor trade vehicles.
Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy asked about this issue during a Dáil debate on Wednesday and was told by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee that the National Fleet Database information was expected to be added to the garda app "in the near future".
"I understand that this data will then be tested by An Garda Síochána before being rolled out to roads policing," she said.
More than 257,000 fleet and motor trade vehicles are on that database and PARC said this information need to be given to the gardaí "straight away".
Speaking at the launch of the database, CEO of the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland David Fitzgerald said the database is being updated on a nightly basis to ensure drivers have the latest information and said this was a "game changer".
"Ireland is effectively going to be closed on uninsured driving now with this powerful technology," Mr Fitzgerald said.
It should also help to lower insurance premiums, he said.
While the MIBI did not set these "what is under our control is what we pay to the victim and if we can reduce the number of accidents, the number of uninsured drivers out there, that's going to help," Mr Fitzgerald said.
People are paying €30-€35 on an average motor insurance policy to compensate the victims of uninsured drivers, he added.
Moyagh Murdock from Insurance Ireland said insurance costs had come down significantly in Ireland in recent years.
"We're down over 40% from its peak and in the last five years it has come down a further €160," she said.
This was competitive with other European countries, she claimed.
She said people caught without insurance were generally "recidivist-type" drivers who were committing a number of offences.
The new technology would also catch out people who had taken out insurance, put up a valid disc in their window and then subsequently cancelled the payments, Ms Murdock said.
