Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I understand the discrepancy was 15,000, but I will come back to the Leader on that. This revelation follows a far more serious discrepancy that emerged last year, when it was revealed that 89 homicides were not included in official statistics for a 14-year period due to what was called a process issue. The IT professionals investigating the matter felt intimidated and stonewalled by Garda officials when the red flag was raised on that matter.

Another strange feature of the more recent figures was that there was no breakdown available on the gender and age of those involved. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, said that this was because the collation of such data would require the expenditure of a disproportionate amount of Garda time. I do not pretend to be an IT expert, or an expert on statistics or the intricacies of the PULSE system, but if details of crimes and arrests are being placed on the Garda IT system, the addition of gender and date of birth of those arrested would not be particularly difficult information to find. As every citizen who interacts with a State agency in any way has his or her gender and date of birth recorded, it seems odd that a Garda system has no capacity to compile these details given the serious matters within its remit.