Mr. John O'Brien:

Yes, and they fall into two categories. The Garda Síochána have identified some of the key offenders and are taking special action against them. Although this is the wrong message to put on the airwaves, all one has to do is ignore the system. If one goes through each of them, there are eight or ten process steps, some of them time-linked. Eventually it will go to the summons issuing stage, which is the ultimate adjudication. A very small percentage of the summonses issued are served and an even smaller number of the summonses that go to court result in a conviction.

In the area I examined, only 14% of the cases that went to court resulted in a conviction. Working on the balance of probabilities, one had an 86% chance of escaping by simply ignoring the system. That is also compounded by the fact that vehicles registered to companies escaped totally. I have been making the point, and waiting for somebody to argue with me on it, that every time there is a detection we capture a photograph. Why do we not use that information?