Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree that it is not its remit. However, is it not the point that all of these issues come back to a cataclysmic failure of management to oversee any of these processes or systems? There appears to be a lack of awareness of why they are there. Take the example of the MAT test. The report basically states, "we did the internal investigation, we are not really sure what has gone on here but there is a number of reasons that we think it might be so". One of the issues is that there was no awareness of why this information was being recorded. I agree that this is a credible answer. However, who designed that system? In every other checkpoint operated by the Garda ordinary rank and file gardaí are asked to record where an offence occurs. They do not record the motorists who have motor tax, just the ones who do not. What genius came up with the idea that the gardaí would record the cars that went through anyway? I agree with the witness. Why would a garda have a problem with ringing up the information centre and saying it could have been 30 or 40? No crime was being carried out so why would the Garda see that as falsified information? I do not.

Is it not the case that the issue here is not breath tests at all, but checkpoints? Deputy Brophy pointed out earlier that a garda would go out on duty and when he came back he would make up the figure when he rang the information centre, because he did not really know what the information was for. How does the Garda know that he did go out and come back? How does the Garda know the checkpoint was conducted? Is it not the case that senior officers were mandated to put up a checkpoint on PULSE? It had to be put up on the system. If that was not carried out afterwards, it was supposed to be invalidated. Certainly, from our experience of talking to gardaí, that often did not happen. Management should have known. It would have known. If the two of us were on duty in the station that night and we got a section 12 warrant and had to drive off with a child, we could not physically have been on that checkpoint that the superintendent told us to conduct. We simply did not have the manpower resources. How do the witnesses know that those checkpoints were cancelled? Based on the reports, there was a pressure to carry out checkpoints. Can the witnesses credibly tell us that all the checkpoints that are on the system were invalidated if they were not carried out? Certainly, from our dialogue with rank and file gardaí that was the unspoken pressure. Nobody wanted to say that the checkpoints were not being carried out. Is that not really the issue? It is not about breath tests at all. Will the acting Garda Commissioner respond to that?