Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think I referred in my correspondence to the fact that there are occasions when the State has to spend money to uphold the law. It is not necessarily about the cost of the provision of the service. We do not know how much it used to cost the State service provider - An Garda Síochána - to provide this service prior to the award of the contract. More importantly, we know from custom, practice and experience that we will not get a copy of a contract. We will have nothing to investigate in the future other than what the gentleman to my right has said. While I understand where the Deputy is coming from, I am not sure it is something we can get our teeth into in a meaningful way. As a member of the justice committee - I will be a former member of it soon - I suggest it would be more appropriate for us to look not necessarily at the financial or contractual side of this matter, but at the effectiveness of this system in reducing motoring offences. That is a matter for the justice committee rather than this committee. I agree that the financial side of these operations would be a matter for this committee. We are not really in a position to answer some of the pertinent questions I have asked about the overall cost of this. More importantly, perhaps, we need to understand that it will cost us a little bit of money to ensure road users adhere to the rules of the road. It is never going to break even.