Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The committee is examining the 2011 Appropriation Account for the Garda Síochána Vote. The Appropriation Account records gross expenditure of €1.57 billion in 2011. Payroll costs and pensions accounted for 86% of expenditure. At the end of the year, 13,900 Garda members and more than 2,000 full-time equivalent civilian staff were employed. This results in a ratio of one civilian for every seven sworn members.

Total payroll costs consisted of slightly more than €1 billion, including €214 million on allowances and €81 million on overtime. The pay outturn for the year was marginally up on the 2010 level, despite the number of staff reducing by approximately 500 year on year. Pension payments to retired members of the force in 2011 were more than €307 million. Spending on pension payments was €61 million lower than originally budgeted because of reduced rates payable to existing pensioners and fewer retirements during 2011 than had been anticipated.

Supplementary Estimate adjustments were made to all of the Vote subheads in 2011. The largest increase was an extra €52 million provided for spending on salaries, wages and allowances. A factor in the increase was additional pay expenditure of €28 million incurred in connection with the State visits of Queen Elizabeth and President Obama.

Another spending area where there was a substantial supplementary provision in 2011 was subhead E, communications and other equipment. The account records a 41% increase in spending compared to 2010, mainly as a result of the outsourcing of road safety speed cameras in November 2010. This additional expenditure on the Vote was offset by a new category of appropriations-in-aid, namely, receipts of fixed charge penalties. In the past, the full receipts of fixed charge penalty payments collected by An Garda Síochána were paid directly to the Central Fund. In 2011, the overall receipts amounted to €23.3 million, of which €10.6 million was retained in the Vote as appropriations-in-aid and the balance of €12.7 million was paid into the Central Fund.

The committee is also considering Chapter 26 which reviews the systems in place for collecting motor tax and monitoring and deterring evasion of the tax. As previously discussed, a number of bodies play a role in the collection, administration and enforcement of motor tax. The committee has already examined the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport on its role, which is mainly concerned with maintaining the register of vehicles and the collection of motor tax paid online. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government has responsibility for motor tax policy and the local government fund, into which the proceeds of the tax are paid.

The Garda Síochána’s responsibility is to enforce the requirement that vehicles publicly in use have and display a current motor tax disc. The main focus of Garda activities in respect of motor tax is to detect cases of failure to display a current disc, levy fixed charge penalties and collect the payments and initiate prosecutions where these charges are not paid on time. In addition, where a vehicle owner wishes to declare that his or her vehicle was off the road for a period and, therefore, not liable to motor tax, a member of an Garda Síochána must witness the declaration. The Non-Use of Motor Vehicles Bill 2013, currently before the Oireachtas, proposes changing to a system whereby such off-the-road declarations are made in advance, rather than the current retrospective declaration.

The examination found evidence that around 5% of randomly sampled vehicles on the road in 2010 and 2011 did not have a current motor tax disc. Based on the estimated number of vehicles in use nationally, this suggests that approximately 125,000 vehicles on public roads are untaxed. The motor tax revenue foregone is estimated at approximately €50 million. This figure excludes cases where the tax disc is less than a month out of date, which is an allowed grace period.

The examination included an analysis of approximately 240,000 fixed charge notices issued between 2008 and 2011. In some cases, multiple penalty notices had been issued to vehicle owners. The total number of vehicles involved was 185,000. We found that around 40% of fixed penalty charges had not been paid. We also found that motor tax had not been paid in respect of some 40,000 vehicles between the date the fixed penalty notice was issued and April 2012. Of those that had paid tax after the fixed penalty notice issued, 35,000 had made false declarations – in the presence of a Garda witness – that the vehicle was not in use at the time the notice was issued.

In summary, the results of our analysis are that the fixed penalty notice system has not resulted in changed behaviour in respect of motor tax compliance in a significant number of cases. The integrity of the off the road declaration system is also seriously undermined when registered vehicle owners, in front of a Garda witness, declare that their vehicle was off the road at a time when it was observed in a public place by another member of the force. The report, therefore, recommends a formal review of the effectiveness of fixed penalty notices as a deterrent and for better procedures to be devised to ensure the tax is paid when non-compliant owners are detected.