Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

They do not see the distinction between whether it did not arrive because there was a failure of post, or just because a summons did not arrive. They see it in terms of one in five fixed charge notices that are issued do not get acted upon. Once people start to understand that, they can start gaming the system and try to avoid it. Fundamentally, that will undermine the acceptance of it. From a managerial point of view, we have to manage it as a set of processes, but we must always understand the combined effect of it and what it looks like to people from the outside.

I wish to go back to the point made by Deputy Deasy about why change does not happen. Change is difficult. It is hard to make change happen. Very often it can be easier to get over a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and move on. That is one of the reasons we have tried to be more explicit about recommendations in recent reports. We will be coming back, checking, and reporting back to the committee, in a more routine way, on whether or not recommendations made have actually been implemented. Hopefully that will effectively keep the pressure on to ensure that the change happens.