Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

Perhaps I could respond to that part of the question. What I am apologising for is the failures that have happened over the last ten years, not only in regard to breath testing. Since 2014, we have been on a major programme of reform in An Garda Síochána. We are trying to put things right and trying to ensure that we serve the public in an open, professional, transparent and ethical manner and to the standards that would be expected of a modern, professional policing service. In doing that, we are turning over a lot of stones. We do not leave a stone unturned. The turning of one of those stones involved a review of issues that were raised with us around the conduct of MAT checkpoints and the breath testing issue that arose in that regard.

Last March, assistant commissioner, Mr. Michael Finn, identified massive discrepancies between the recorded breath tests on PULSE and the records held by the Medical Bureau of Road Safety. Last Friday, I appointed an assistant commissioner to investigate how this happened. What we do know at this point is that these discrepancies occurred individually. In other words, individual members entered numbers on the system that do not match or correspond with the numbers recorded on the system of the Medical Bureau of Road Safety.