Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The problem is that there is a huge contradiction between the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the report of the Garda into the penalty points issue. The Comptroller and Auditor General found 600 repeat offenders with three or four terminations; the Garda report found a few. The Comptroller and Auditor General found 3,000 statute-barred points cases; there was no mention of these in the Garda report. Thousands of fixed penalty notices went missing and were unaccounted for according to the Comptroller and Auditor General; there is no mention of this in the Garda report. The Comptroller and Auditor General said large volumes of notices were terminated by gardaí from outside their areas; the Garda report said there were three. The Comptroller and Auditor General said there were thousands of notices whose cancellation contravened the rules and regulations; the Garda report said it was 600. The Comptroller and Auditor General said €1.2 million had been lost; the Garda report said it was a few thousand euro. Can the Minister explain?

Is it not the case that the whistleblowers are exonerated as truthful and honest in light of this revelation? One person has left and another member is subject to sanctions. Will the Minister see that justice now prevails here?

Finally, another victim of the penalty points debacle, Gemma O'Doherty, a leading investigative journalist with Independent Newspapers, was sacked because she uncovered a story that the Garda Commissioner was a beneficiary of the cancellation of penalty points. According to the Irish Post, the editor of the Irish Independent who sacked her was also a beneficiary of cancellation. Is that not outrageous and does it not smack of a grotesque abuse of power? Will the Minister speak out on this also?

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