Ireland International Driving Permit (IDP)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-04

The document was derived from and cross-checked against the official/primary sources below. The full field-by-field comparison the practice requires has been completed once against those sources (this record), but not yet by a second, independent reviewer — so status remains draft, not verified.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): ie/dttas/international-driving-permit / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Road Safety Authority, National Driver Licence Service (NDLS). As of 18 May 2026, NDLS is the sole issuer of Irish IDPs, having taken over from the AA (a private motoring association) — a genuine government body, not a third-party operator, so this document does not use GSP-0020's authority.operatedBy.
• Primary sources:
  • https://www.ndls.ie/licensed-driver/international-driver-permit.html — NDLS's own IDP page: eligibility, the two convention types (1926/1949), fee, and a 10-question FAQ (all fetched and read verbatim via a live headless-browser session, not summarized secondhand — see below).
  • https://www.ndls.ie/images/PDF_Documents/NDLS_Int_Driving_Permit_App_Form_v3.pdf — the actual IDP application form: a static (non-AcroForm), 2-page PDF. Page 1 is the 6-part form itself (Applicant Details, Contact Details, Driving Licence Details, International Driving Permit, Applicant Declaration, NDLS/Official Use Only); page 2 is guidance notes and terms and conditions. Extracted in full with pdfjs-dist's text layer.
  • https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/travel-and-recreation/motoring/driver-licensing/international-driving-permit/ — the State's own citizen-information service (a statutory body under the Department of Social Protection), page edited 15 June 2026: confirms the AA-to-NDLS handover date, the "except parts 5 and 6" instruction, and the 3-months-remaining-on-licence rule.
• Access note (bot-block encountered and defeated): www.ndls.ie sits behind a Cloudflare Turnstile "managed challenge" that returns HTTP 403 / "Just a moment..." to a plain fetch or WebFetch. A real headless-Chromium session (Playwright, navigator.webdriver patched out, a real desktop Chrome user agent) resolved the HTML guidance pages after ~5 seconds. The PDF asset path (/images/PDF_Documents/...) required a further step: an in-context request.get() still returned 403 (the Turnstile challenge does not appear to gate that path the same way over XHR), but navigating the page itself directly to the PDF URL triggered a genuine browser download event, whose bytes were captured via Playwright's page.waitForEvent( 'download') / download.saveAs() — a new technique for this class of block, distinct from the pure-JS auto-passing challenges defeated in GOV-803/GOV-960's browser walkthroughs.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-04 (all sources fetched and read live at authoring time).
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer, initial authoring source-review).

What was confirmed against the source

| Source element | Field(s) | |---|---| | "It is available to Irish residents who hold a current full Irish driving licence and to all EU or EEA licence holders who are resident in Ireland... It cannot be issued to learner permit holders or non-EU/EEA licence holders." | holdsFullIrishOrEuEeaDrivingLicence, isLearnerPermitHolder, isNonEuEeaLicenceHolder (eligibility exits) | | "you must have at least 3 months remaining on your licence to apply" | licenceValidForAtLeastThreeMoreMonths | | "An IDP may be issued for an endorsed licence once there are not 12 penalty points or more on it." / "If an IDP applicant's driving ban is still in force, an IDP cannot be issued" | hasTwelveOrMorePenaltyPoints, hasActiveDrivingBan | | Form Part 1 (Applicant Details) | fullName, dateOfBirth, countryOfBirth | | Form Part 2 (Contact Details) | address, contactPhoneNumber, emailAddress | | Form Part 3 (Driving Licence Details) | drivingLicenceType, drivingLicenceNumber, licenceIssuingCountry, licenceCategoriesHeld | | "Proof of Address requirement... only required where the address on your driving licence differs from your current address, or where you hold an EU/EEA driving licence and are resident in Ireland... a recent domestic bill issued within the last 6 months" | addressDiffersFromLicenceAddress field; proofOfAddress document (requiredWhen, freshness.issuedWithin: P6M) | | Form Part 4 (International Driving Permit): "1926 - Only required if traveling to Brazil, Burundi, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia" / "1949 - Required for all other countries" | permit1926Requested, permit1949Requested | | "Only one IDP may be issued per licence per year unless you are looking for a replacement for an issued permit, in which case the IDP application form must be accompanied by a Garda report of the original IDP's loss." | isReplacementForLostOrStolenIdp field; gardaReportOfLoss document (requiredWhen) | | "IDP application fee (15 euro - card payment only on the day)" | idpApplicationFeeEur, paymentMethod | | Form Part 5 (Applicant Declaration), all five printed assertions plus signature/date | declarationInformationTrueAndCorrect, declarationUnderstandsTwelveMonthValidity, declarationUnderstandsOnePermitPerYear, declarationHoldsValidLicenceAtApplication, declarationAcceptsIdpConditions, declarationDate | | Guidance Notes: "Applicants must bring: A valid Irish or EU/EEA driving licence... One passport-sized photograph" | drivingLicence, passportSizedPhoto documents |

Conformance test run

conformance/ie/dttas/international-driving-permit/1.0.0/application-packet.json models an eligible full-Irish-licence holder applying for a first-time (not replacement) 1949 Convention IDP. A scripted evaluator (/tmp/conformance_check.mjs at authoring time, not committed — it reimplements the GSP-0013 condition grammar: all/any/not, the seven conditionLeaf comparison operators, requiredWhen on fields and documents, and step transitions) checked the packet against the schema and found 0 violations across 24 fields + 5 documents. Four mutation tests confirmed the schema's conditional logic actually fires, not just that the happy path passes:

1. addressDiffersFromLicenceAddress = true → proofOfAddress document becomes required. Confirmed.
2. drivingLicenceType = 'eu_eea' (with addressDiffersFromLicenceAddress left false) → proofOfAddress still becomes required, via the any condition's second branch. Confirmed.
3. isReplacementForLostOrStolenIdp = true → gardaReportOfLoss document becomes required. Confirmed.
4. hasActiveDrivingBan = true → the eligibility step exits with exitReason: "not-eligible" instead of continuing to applicant_details. Confirmed.

Full console output is saved as conformance/ie/dttas/international-driving-permit/1.0.0/application-packet.txt.

A known grammar gap (documented, not silently worked around)

The source form allows ticking either or both of the 1926/1949 permit-type boxes ("tick below the appropriate permit(s) you require"), with the rule "at least one must be ticked." The v0.3 condition grammar has no operator for "at least one of these two independent booleans is true" (crossFieldValidation's requirePresent/requireAbsent test field presence, not a boolean's value). Rather than force a wrong-fit rule the way a prior cycle's notEquals-against-an-absent-field bug did (see the notequals-empty-string-absent-field-bug lesson), this constraint is recorded in both fields' description only, not enforced structurally. Flagged here so a future spec proposal (a requireAtLeastOne condition operator, or similar) has a concrete motivating case.

What remains out of scope

• Live confirmation of the appointment-booking phone flow (0818 919 090) — no online booking form exists to walk through; the guidance/form-level detail above is the full public surface.
• Part 6 (NDLS/Official Use Only: centre location, booklet serial number, verifying officer name/signature) is agency-internal and out of scope, per the boundary that GovSchema models applicant-facing input, not government back-office record-keeping.
• The AA's own historical IDP process (superseded 18 May 2026) is out of scope; this document models the current NDLS process only.

Next review

nextReviewBy: 2027-01-04, or sooner if NDLS changes the fee, the eligibility rules, or publishes an online application channel.