Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

As members of the committee will be aware members of An Garda Síochána may issue a fixed charged notice to the drivers or owners of vehicles for certain road traffic offences. These include offences committed while driving, such as speeding or driving while using a mobile phone and compliance offences such as illegal parking and failure to display an up-to-date motor tax disc. The penalty associated with a fixed charge notice is a fine or, for most offences committed while driving, a fine and the attachment of penalty points to the driver's licence.

One of the key objectives of the fixed charge notice system is to contribute to safer driving and reduced road accident casualties. Most drivers and vehicle owners usually comply voluntarily with the relevant laws. Unfortunately, some drivers may only act in a compliant manner if they perceive that there is a reasonable probability that they will be detected if they commit an offence and that such detections will result in the imposition and enforcement of significant penalties. A perceived low probability of detection or perceived widespread failure to impose penalties following detection could result in increased frequency of commission of offences. Any widespread perception of arbitrary or partial application of enforcement of the law by An Garda Síochána could undermine the deterrent effect and public acceptance of the system.

My office has previously examined and reported on three occasions on the system of control applied by An Garda Síochána in relation to the fixed charge notice system or its predecessor, the OA-the-spot fine system. In July 2012, a member of An Garda Síochána contacted my office seeking a meeting to discuss concerns he had about the current operation of the fixed charge notice system. The individual alleged that in many cases fixed charge notices had been cancelled corruptly and illegally. It was also alleged that a number of persons who had benefited from one or more cancellations of fixed charge notices for speeding or dangerous driving had subsequently committed similar offences or resulting in some cases in deaths or injury to themselves or third parties.

The information presented to us appeared to indicate that matters reported in previous reports had not resulted in improved or sufficiently improved control systems within An Garda Síochána. For this reason, I initiated an examination by staff of my office of the fixed charge notice system. Examinations by my office generally focus on the adequacy of systems, procedures and practices implemented by the bodies audited by me. Other than to record relevant facts about the actions of individuals, I do not have the remit to investigate or report on the behaviour or motivation of individuals. Accordingly, the examination undertaken by my office did not seek to address the allegations of corruption and illegality on the part of members of An Garda Síochána or of alleged offences committed by members of the public. That is the background to the examination.

I will now deal with the report findings. I draw the committee's attention to paragraph 7.11 of the report which summarises the results of our analysis of the fixed charge notice data for 2011 and 2012. The results are expressed in terms of the percentage of detected cases where a decision was made to initiate a fixed charge notice. The available evidence indicates that where a notice was initiated two out of every three drivers paid their fine within the specified time. Where relevant, penalty points were added to their licence record. In a further 10% of cases, the fine was not paid in a timely manner and the recipients of the notices had their cases determined in court. I should point out that the examination did not include a review of those cases that are determined in court.

An Garda Síochána has adopted a clearly stated policy in relation to the termination or cancellation of fixed charge notice cases. This is set out in the force's manual for the system. The policy requires termination in certain cases where statutory exemptions are provided for subject to specified conditions being satisfied. This includes, for example, emergency response vehicles detected speeding by speed cameras. The policy also specifies a number of exceptional situations where relevant Garda district officers may use their discretion and terminate a case if relevant facts are established. While the policy is clear, we found that the operation of the fixed charge processing system did not accord with the termination policy in certain key respects. In particular, the system allowed cases to be terminated on additional unspecified discretionary grounds over and above the exceptional circumstances specified in the policy statement.

Also, senior officers who had the facility to terminate cases on the processing system were not restricted to doing so only for cases within their district or unit.

There is also evidence that the policy on termination of cases is not being applied consistently. The rates of termination in many districts appeared too high to be considered reflective of exceptional circumstances ranging, for example, from 0.1% of cases initiated in Birr district to over 5% in Ennis, Roscommon and Sligo districts. That is more than 50 times higher than in Birr. In the samples reviewed for this examination, a significant proportion of cases appear to have been terminated in circumstances that do not satisfy the stated policy. Absent and inadequate records and the recorded facts of many cases give rise to concerns that many cases have been terminated without due cause. Furthermore, there are grounds for concern that certain outside district cases may have been terminated without appropriate authority.

Almost one-third of fixed charge notice cases are initiated by gardaí who intercept motorists and record details of offences on notepad forms. The design of the control system for the notepads potentially allows for effective control of the forms, but this was not achieved in a significant proportion of cases because over 7% of the notepad forms are not accounted for. As notepad users were not required in practice to account for every form, this created scope for effective cancellation of fixed charge notices subsequent to initiation outside of the formal notice cancellation procedure and without the appropriate controls. A related issue is that a significant number of the 3,000 cases which became statute barred in 2011 and 2012 was due to late entry of data from notepads and hand-held devices onto the processing system.

Over 21% of fixed charge notices in 2011 and 2012 did not result in timely payment and resulted in the issuing of a summons for service by An Garda Síochána. We found that more than half of the summonses issued in 2011 cases were not served, leading to the cases being struck out in court. As a result, one in nine detected fixed charge notice offences was unpaid but did not result in a court hearing.

Members may also wish to note that in a previous report in 2003 we reported that there was an impediment in the fixed charge processing system that resulted in an inability to take appropriate action against drivers of company cars. In this report, we note that 1.2% of 2011 and 2012 cases were not pursued because the notice was issued to a company and the company did not identify the driver. We also found that approximately 600 vehicles had three or more terminations of notices in the two years examined.

Overall, the examination concluded that, because of significant weaknesses in aspects of the operation of the fixed charge notice system, a substantial proportion of detected offenders, up to one in five, did not pay their fines and did not end up in court. In my view, those operational weaknesses must be addressed urgently by An Garda Síochána and other relevant agencies to underpin the effectiveness of the system and ensure fairness and continued public confidence in, and acceptance of, the fixed charge notice system. I have made a number of recommendations in my report aimed at addressing the key control weaknesses identified in this examination. The Garda Commissioner has indicated that he accepts those recommendations and I understand he has provided the committee with an update on progress in their implementation.