Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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As the Minister knows, the Comptroller and Auditor General reported on his findings in regard to the fixed charge notice system. The outcome is absolutely shocking. What he has revealed is that because of clearly widespread maladministration and very poor procedures, one in five motorists facing fixed charge notices are getting off. We are talking about 42,000 cases a year, and half of the summonses that were issued by the courts in regard to these were not served.

This is a crisis. It is not good enough for the Minister to issue circulars. We need to see how the hell this happened. The Minister knows that two Garda whistleblowers brought this wider issue into the public domain last year. He and the Garda Commissioner, I believe, sought to undermine their credibility and talked down the numbers that were involved, and we now see very clearly that they have been vindicated. What is the Minister going to do about this? It is a massive crisis of confidence for the public. The 71% of people who pay their fine, take it on the chin and accept they did break the speed limit, or whatever they had done to break the traffic laws, need to know that the system applies to everybody.

Will the Minister now apologise to the two Garda whistleblowers for the attempts by himself and the Garda Commissioner at that time to discredit them and to undermine the scope of what they were bringing into the public domain? Will he acknowledge they were right that there was a widespread problem with the system of penalty points in this State and that it has to be sorted out?

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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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?

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I will respond to both Deputies but, on the last issue raised by the Deputy who just spoke, I am not privy to the background circumstances of the termination of anyone's employment with Independent Newspapers and I am certainly not going to comment in any way on that issue.

I welcome the opportunity to comment on the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General in his report on the Garda fixed-charge processing system. I welcome these findings because they confirm what went wrong with the system and what needed to be fixed. Broadly speaking, the findings echo those of the examination of the same allegations which was carried out by Assistant Garda Commissioner John O'Mahoney. I published the O'Mahoney report and a related report by the Garda professional standards unit earlier this year and referred them to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality.

The O'Mahoney report broadly identified the same key issues of concern relating to the operation of the fixed-charge processing system as were identified by the Comptroller and Auditor General, namely, a failure to follow cancellation procedures in a significant number of cases, a lack of adequate record-keeping, and an inconsistency - in many cases, a laxity - in accepting justifications for speeding and other road traffic offences. There is absolutely no doubt that the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General reinforce both the concerns identified by the O'Mahoney report about weaknesses in the fixed-charge notice system and the case for corrective action.

Such action has been taken. Disciplinary proceedings were initiated against several members of the Garda Síochána and a number of others were advised of the absolute necessity to follow correct procedures. A new Garda directive on the cancellation of fixed-charge notices was issued to the entire force on 30 August 2013, aimed at significantly tightening up procedures for cancellation. The Garda Commissioner has accepted and will implement specific and helpful recommendations by the Comptroller and Auditor General on improving the fixed-charge notice system and how it interacts with the Courts Service and the driver licensing system. In addition, as I previously indicated, I have referred the two Garda reports to the independent Garda Inspectorate for its advice on any further measures that might be desirable. I expect to receive its report in the near future.

I welcome the action taken by the Garda Commissioner in this area and his commitment to implement the further recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The result will be a fixed-charge notice system that is more open and transparent and more robustly operated. This is essential if public confidence in the system and in the enforcement of road traffic law is to be maintained. The Garda Síochána, the Road Safety Authority and other stakeholders have done much in recent years to improve road safety and reduce fatalities. Everything must be done to maintain that progress, and the Garda Commissioner has my full support in the strong action he is taking.

It is only fair to acknowledge that these reports, and their findings and recommendations, are in response to allegations of improper cancellation of fixed-charge notices. However, any fair assessment must also conclude, on the evidence available, that a great many of the most serious allegations have been found to be utterly without basis, including allegations of avoidable road fatalities linked to speeding drivers being improperly let off fixed-charge notices and allegations of hundreds of PULSE records being destroyed. Perhaps most significantly, the member of the Garda Síochána who made the allegations rejects the findings of the O'Mahoney report and continues to claim there has been widespread corruption and criminality on the part of senior members of the force. These are exceptionally serious allegations, for which the O'Mahoney report found no basis in fact. My Department has written to the member concerned urging him to come forward with any evidence he may have to justify these allegations. It is open to this person, if he so chooses, to make an appropriate presentation to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality. He has not thus far opted to avail of that opportunity.

In conclusion, I welcome the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General, which are in line with the findings of the report by Assistant Commissioner O'Mahoney published earlier this year. I fully support the Garda Commissioner in the decisive action he is taking on foot of those findings. I will do my best to facilitate any further co-ordination that is required between An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service to ensure the efficient enforcement of summonses in the area of traffic offences. I will seek to ensure that the courts have available to them all the documentation and information they require when addressing issues which properly come before them. It would, however, be highly inappropriate for me to interfere in any way with the independent approach taken by the courts or by particular District Court judges in any individual cases which come before them relating to charges arising out of road traffic offences.

Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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The 71% of citizens who paid their fine and took their penalty points on the chin must be appalled to discover that up to one in five of those facing the same sanction managed to get away with it. It is clear, given the massive scale of such practices, that they arose largely due to maladministration. However, there are cases which give cause for serious concern. We have had allegations, for instance, that judges, serving gardaí, State solicitors and others have had points written off repeatedly. We were recently informed that several senior journalists - who are supposed to be working to hold gardaí to account - have had the same write-off. It has been further alleged that one journalist, Ms Gemma O'Doherty, lost her job because of the investigative work she was doing in this area.

Will the Minister undertake to investigate why at least two senior journalists at the publication mentioned in the Guardian and the Irish Post had penalty points written off? Such an investigation is necessary to ascertain whether those write-offs arose from genuine circumstances, as they may well have done. The public has a right to know in either case. We must have the answers in the interests of democracy and if public confidence in the system is to be restored. As I said, the larger problem was clearly one of major maladministration, but there are also cases where very powerful and connected people apparently had their points written off simply because of who they knew. That is totally wrong and the Minister must investigate the extent and circumstances of that alleged practice.

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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All that is demanded is that any of us who have incurred penalty points are treated in the same way, regardless of whether one is a public figure or private citizen. The Minister indicated that the conclusions of the Comptroller and Auditor General are in line with the findings of the report by Assistant Commissioner O'Mahoney. That is clearly not the case, as is easily documented. I invite the Minister to get his officials to go through the records with a fine tooth comb to revise his view on that.

The Minister further stated that it is only fair to acknowledge that these reports and their findings and recommendations come in response to allegations by whistleblowers, as I would describe them. I am asking the Minister to go the extra mile and be generous here. Perhaps these individuals did not get everything absolutely right, but the vast substance of what they said has proved to be absolutely honest and true. Yet they have been victimised. The Minister must stand up and champion the right of people in vulnerable positions to come out for the public good. I am asking him to do so today and to apologise for the inaccurate comments he has made castigating these people.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Higgins should be assured that nobody has been victimised.

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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The individuals in question were victimised.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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There is no basis for alleging that anybody has been victimised. The allegations that were made were taken very seriously. They included claims that a number of road accidents in which people lost their lives were a consequence of fixed-notice charges being cancelled. That was established, on a very detailed basis, to be untrue. Those allegations could have caused a great deal of distress to families already distressed as a consequence of losing a loved one. Despite the very detailed addressing of these matters in a report that is before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality and was published by me, the individuals who raised these issues are adamantly insisting that they disagree with the contents of the report.

The allegations alleged widespread corruption and conspiracy in An Garda Síochána. There is absolutely no doubt that there have been administrative and bureaucratic failings. It is also clear that a number of fixed-notice charge cancellations were, based on the background circumstances as detailed in the report, absolutely justified. Anybody would stand by them. There were some decisions which I have described as "exotic" and are certainly open to question. That is one of the reasons the Garda Commissioner, having made an initial statement when the original reports were published, went on to oversee the provision of detailed new guidelines providing for greater oversight. It was suggested earlier today in this House that these new guidelines simply reproduce the ones that went before. That is not the case. The new guidelines address matters in such a way as to ensure there is proper oversight, cancellation decisions are made only where appropriate and everybody is treated equally and transparently. In fact, it could be said there is some disadvantage under the new system for people who are in prominent positions, such as Members of this House.

They will be treated less than equally because there is an additional level and a particular layer in the new guidelines to ensure applications by them for cancellation are dealt with at a higher level of the Garda Síochána. There is complete transparency and everything is monitored. I am very happy with this.

In so far as individuals who raised issues are alleging that the Garda reports published are untrue, let them bring forward chapter and verse and proof of this. I am open to being convinced, but they have not done so. Having engaged with Members of this House and published material, they did not co-operate with the Garda investigations that took place. I do not know why that was the case. There is no question of anyone being victimised.

It is important to keep cancellations in perspective. I say this in particular to Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn. The Garda Síochána and Comptroller and Auditor General's reports are consistent in showing the level of cancellations of fixed charge notices to be around 5%, meaning that 95% of fixed charge notices have been processed correctly. Within that 5%, in half of the cases there was irrefutable evidence and indisputable reasons for cancelling them. The wrong people had received fixed charge notices or the registration number photographed turned out to be different for the car owned by an individual. It is true that the Comptroller and Auditor General's report identified some weaknesses in the process, particularly in issuing enforcement notices, but I am glad that the Garda Commissioner is taking action in this area. The Deputy can assume I will continue to monitor the position to ensure matters are dealt with appropriately. I have no doubt that the Garda Síochána Inspectorate will keep oversight of the area in order that everyone in the House will be satisfied the system is fair and operating efficiently and appropriately.