Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The public is genuinely shocked by the revelations of last week in regard to operational activities by An Garda Síochána, in particular the fact that 146,000 people were wrongly summoned to court for road traffic infringements and, of those, 14,700 received sanctions and convictions. It is a fundamental issue that undermines our criminal justice system, the relationship between our courts and gardaí, and the veracity of what they bring to the courts in terms of evidence.

Second, 1 million breath tests were falsely put up on PULSE. Essentially, in four years 1 million were actually done but gardaí were saying they did 2 million. It is a completely false figure. It is a very serious issue for a number of reasons, a fundamental one being the integrity of An Garda Síochána.

Of course, data and information of this kind informs policy, so the impression is out there that there is constant major attack on drink-driving, and that we are on top of it as we are doing 2 million breath tests, and so on. The reality is far from that, and it is arguable it neutered a policy response in regard to drink-driving. I can recall the former chairman of the Road Safety Authority, Gay Byrne, complaining about the lack of enforcement. Is this the response to the lack of enforcement - to falsify the figures?

Is it to create promotion opportunities? What is it? We do not know. We have not been told why the figures were falsified. The language in all the press releases is cautious, careful and designed not to tell us. Three years on from when this was initially told to the Garda by the Medical Bureau for Road Safety, we are told the Garda still has to try to find out what happened. We know that the Garda wrote to the Department of Justice and Equality in June 2016. What did the Minister do with that? Did she intervene at any stage up to last week? Why did the Minister for Justice and Equality not inform the Dáil about this issue? We learnt that the Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, apparently received correspondence from Mr. Gay Byrne again, in his capacity as chairman of the RSA, from a whistleblower outlining all of this.

There are fundamental questions. Why did the Garda Commissioner not inform the Policing Authority? She met its representatives six times in the last year but did not inform them that an audit was under way nor of the scale of the revelations that were about to unfold. Why did the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, not inform the Dáil and intervene much earlier? I ask that all correspondence that the Minister received from the Garda on this issue be published and made available to Dáil Members. How can the Taoiseach still express confidence in the Commissioner and in the shambles that has unfolded in front of our very eyes?

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