Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour)
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The Comptroller and Auditor General's report of 2000, 14 years ago, stated that there was a practice of allowing fine notices to be cancelled on the instructions of Garda superintendents without recording the reasons and that this may have led to different criteria for cancellations being applied in different areas and may also have created a perception that certain kinds of fine could be fixed. That was from the Comptroller and Auditor General's special report in 2000. Those concerns were repeated in 2003 and again in 2007. Yet it took allegations, whistleblowing and a serious media storm in 2012 to have the system updated and put in place new procedures and investigations. Why did it have to become a national scandal causing national uproar for recommendations that were made 13 or 14 years ago to be implemented?