Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the remarks of sympathy and I thank the witnesses for coming in. I will be relatively brief because I am getting a bit sick of these meetings, and I do not mean that in a derogatory way. This is the third sitting we have had on the same events. The first time we sat here we got the apologies and explanations. We were told systems were in place and they were going to be dealt with. The second time we had the internal report telling us all the measures that had been put in place and the new explanations. Now we have another report giving us more explanations and contradicting some of the previous explanations. Where it really gets me is that issues which I specifically put to the Garda Síochána the last time directly and repeatedly, and I have the transcript, particularly on the issue of checkpoints, were disputed by all the witnesses stating it was not the case. I put it that the issue really was checkpoints and that we had considerable evidence on this. One would not have to be a rocket scientist to realise that one of the key reasons the breath test figure was being inflated was because checkpoints which went up on the system and then had to be cancelled were being recorded as having been done. The witnesses told me this could not happen. Crowe Horwath's report states this is exactly what happened and it put it much more articulately than I did. It states some members would inflate the number of checkpoints recorded on PULSE, and thereby the number of breath tests, in order to be seen to have delivered the number of checkpoints authorised for that tour of duty. It also states they simply could not manage to perform all those which had been authorised and the habit had, therefore, developed of entering erroneous data onto PULSE. For instance, if three were authorised and only one was carried out, two checkpoints might be registered on PULSE. As we all know, a zero cannot be registered so five or six breath tests would have to be put in. What is the point of us coming here and asking questions? That is my first question.