Clerk to the Committee:

If I might make one point to Deputy Ross on the use of discretion, when the Commissioner appeared before the committee and we had a discussion, at that stage we were talking about discretion on the part of a garda on the side of the road. For example, if he or she stopped the Deputy to tell him he was driving at 62 km/h and he agreed he was, a garda at that stage would use discretion by not issuing a ticket. That is the discretion to which I was referring, not the subsequent discretion in respect of a system that is in place whereby a superintendent can cancel a point. As far as I can see, the problem is that sometimes, they have cancelled the point where the garda already had not used discretion and had issued a ticket. In such a case, a garda had stopped one for speeding and while one stated one had an excuse, the garda replied that he or she was obliged to give one a ticket and a caution but the ticket in question was cancelled subsequently. The garda already had used discretion at that stage and I think this is where the fundamental problem lay with discretion.

The other problem with discretion was that if penalty points and a fine were cancelled on the PULSE system, there should be an audit in place. For example, if one petitions somebody to state one was on the way to hospital in an emergency and shows the emergency card, that person would agree this fits the policy and that is fine. However, this was not in place. Similarly, somebody might state he or she is a garda who was on duty and was apprehending someone. In such a case, there is an outcome of a crime that can be backed up somewhere else. This is the kind of environment in which we in fact were not operating.

As for the use of discretion, what the committee was saying, and what I was reflecting, was where a garda stops somebody on the side of the road and decides whether to issue a ticket. That is discretion that is used by all police forces and probably entails gardaí using common sense on the side of the road. That is the only discretion to which I was referring and the committee had no difficulty with it.