Mr. John O'Brien:

I am very reluctant to comment on the commercial interactions because I am now involved in the commercial field and appreciate that commerce is something that drives the economy. However, in simple, objective terms, if one wants to compare the Garda cameras and the GoSafe cameras like two horses in a race, in my opening remarks I stated there are something like 40 GoSafe camera detection vans and something like eight to ten Garda vans - I am unsure of the exact number. The return from the Garda vans, with one fourth the number of vans, is greater by a few percentage points than it is from GoSafe. In addition, the GoSafe camera operation was predicated on an assumption that did not prove to be correct, which was there would be an endless revenue stream from the detection of speeding offences. People forgot something very simple, which is that one product of good road safety policy is that detections decrease as road safety improves. The mandatory alcohol testing checkpoints are proof positive of that. When I was a young garda 40 years ago, were I to operate a checkpoint in this city on a Saturday night, probably every second car would have somebody with an alcohol problem. This no longer is the case and the same thing holds true in respect of speeding. We have reached a high degree of compliance because people understand something very simple, which is there is the strong probability of sanction if one is exceeding the speed limit. The same applies, to a lesser degree possibly, on the drunken driving side and the sanctions work from that point of view.

The other point I wish to make to the Deputy on the question of GoSafe versus Garda vans is that a great deal of collateral information is collected by the Garda speed vans that is of use right across the entire Garda spectrum. The committee may be aware of something called automatic number plate recognition, ANPR, which is now a well-known crime fighting tool in which the numbers of recognised criminals involved in organised crime or drug crime are fed into a centralised computer system. These numbers are then recognised by the camera and, in turn, that collateral information becomes of use to the greater Garda force, as well as to citizens. Consequently, there much collateral benefit to the Garda van in addition to speed detection alone. On business grounds, it does not make sense and on operational grounds, the Garda and the community are losing a significant amount of information that is useful to the community and in the fight against crime.