Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

As the Chairman outlined, the people with me today are Deputy Commissioner John Twomey, Deputy Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin, Assistant Commissioner Michael Finn, who is in charge of roads policing, and the chief administrative officer, Mr. Joe Nugent. As Garda Commissioner and on behalf of An Garda Síochána, I sincerely apologise for the grave mistakes and wrongdoing during the last decade that have led to the two controversies we are here today to discuss. Those mistakes and wrongdoings are unacceptable in policing terms, unacceptable in ethical terms, unacceptable in terms of public trust, and, most critically, unacceptable to the advocacy and support groups involved in road safety and to those who were wrongly brought before the courts. They have raised serious issues about how at all levels the service was managed, how certain gardaí operated on the ground and the supervision applied. Given the scale of these issues, they cannot simply be blamed on one individual or one area. It is a collective failure from top down and bottom up. We all take responsibility for this and for ensuring we establish how this happened and that it cannot happen again. The committee has been provided with a detailed timeline of events for both matters. As these are two separate issues, I will deal with each one separately.

I will start with the issue of summonses for fixed charge notices, FCNs, being wrongly issued. In February 2016, a garda contacted our call centre, known as the Garda Information Services Centre, GISC, in Castlebar and alerted them that the Garda Síochána was issuing summonses for not having a valid national car test, NCT, certificate when it should have been a fine. GISC put checks in place to stop this happening but some summonses had been previously issued and were still in the system. Discovering the issue was nationwide; we took two actions. The first was to put an information technology fix in place to prevent it happening it again. An instruction that all proceedings incorrectly instituted be withdrawn was also issued.

We immediately initiated a look-back, which demonstrated that a number of cases had already been incorrectly referred to the courts and dealt with by way of summons rather than FCN, and this had to be rectified. In each and every case an offence had been committed, but an incorrect procedure had been employed. An Garda Síochána has spoken to the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, and the Courts Service about how to address cases where a penalty point has been imposed. A dedicated team has been set up and we are liaising with the Courts Service to expedite this process. We will be writing to all the people affected from 3 April 3 2017 on the foot of the advice we sought from the DPP. We will explain what happened and how we propose to rectify the matter. Any fines imposed will be reimbursed and all records involved will be corrected. Anyone who believes they have been affected by this matter will be able to contact a helpline from 3 April 2017.

I will deal now with the separate issue of breath tests. Correspondence from the Road Safety Authority, RSA, to the Minister responsible for transport was brought to our notice in 2014, where the issue of mandatory alcohol testing, MAT, checkpoints and other matters were raised. The fact that the original complaint was anonymous hindered our ability to investigate the matter fully.

However, I issued an instruction to deputy commissioner of operations who subsequently directed all regional assistant commissioners, chief superintendents and superintendents to ensure effective mechanisms were in place to monitor the operation of Mandatory Alcohol Testing, MAT, checkpoints within their respective divisions and districts. The Department of Justice and Equality was also advised of this. In addition, we set up a working group to review the recording of traffic equipment and PULSE related data. The outcome of this working group indicated significant discrepancies in data in one region. Following this, a nationwide review of all breath test data commenced in June 2016. We then notified the Department of Justice and Equality of this review and put a note on our website saying our breath test figures were subject to review. The review was unable to reconcile the PULSE data and the paper-based breath test data, primarily due to significant gaps in the manually recorded breath test data. To validate the data, we asked the Medical Bureau of Road Safety to provide us with the data from its breath test screening devices. In terms of the scale of difference between its data and ours from 2011 and 2016, the Garda Síochána PULSE data was 1,995,369 and the Medical Bureau of Road Safety data was 1,058,157.

In November 2016, new electronic procedures were installed on the Garda PULSE system. This meant personnel had to record the serial number of the device used for each breath test, plus the meter reading, before and after the checkpoint was concluded. Data from the device is now used to verify the total number of breath tests conducted at each checkpoint and it indicates that our figures match with those of the Medical Bureau of Road Safety for 2016-17. The breath testing and FCPN issues are being resolved and this will be externally validated. However, the fact is that we now know some gardaí recorded exaggerated numbers. At worst, this was deception. At best, this was incompetence. Either way, it was individually and organisationally shameful, and will be seen to be shameful by the public and the thousands of gardaí around the country who operate every day to the highest ethical standards. It also raises serious questions of supervision and management. My fear – my real fear - is that this falsification and these mistakes may not be confined to traffic data. I will ensure that the people responsible at all levels will be held to account.