Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is utterly shocking that to find out the Garda went to Canada and Wales yet nobody said to the superintendents in the stations: "Listen lads, if there is a return for a checkpoint there, we might want to make sure that they were not actually doing another job at the same time as they are claiming to have done a checkpoint." I am not blaming individual gardaí for this. The only way it adds up is that there was pressure, once a checkpoint went up on the system, to say that it had been done regardless of whether it had or not. That is the only thing that makes sense.

In that context, the witness has said there was a problem with supervision. Is it now his contention that senior management have lost all authority among the membership? It was striking that only seven people answered Mr. O'Sullivan's survey on this issue. By contrast, Geoffrey Shannon had 100% compliance. Is Mr. O'Sullivan saying they have lost the trust of the membership? In the context of his claim that this was a supervision problem, why in God's name would he now target individual gardaí and accuse them of inflating breath tests when he accepts that they did not know what the information was for and had no credible idea that it could be involved in any wrongdoing because they were not reporting any crimes? Surely continuing with that line is incredibly unhelpful and demoralising for ordinary gardaí.