Garda Commissioner’s statement falls far short of required answers

Far from alleviating the crisis that now looks like it may cost her her job, the statement issued by Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan over the weekend leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Her words were a clear attempt to claim the latest crises as resulting from some brave new reform process under way under her commissionership.

One is left in no doubt about two things from the Garda chief’s statement.

Firstly, the latest crises were unearthed by the Garda itself; and, secondly, they were publicly revealed by the Garda of its own volition.

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Last Thursday the Garda called a press conference and revealed that only half of the two million alcohol breath tests supposedly carried out between 2012 and 2016 had actually happened.

And they also revealed a systems error had resulted in 14,700 motorists being wrongly summoned to court and convicted of various motoring offences. They should never have ended up in the courts because they had already paid fines when their fixed-charge notices for their infringements had arrived in the post.

Ms O’Sullivan said in her statement: “As evidenced this week, I am determined that where we identify problems in the organisation, we admit these issues publicly, take whatever corrective action is necessary and ensure they do not recur.”

The trouble is the words simply don’t match the timeline of the breath-test scandal.

Medical bureau

The issue with the phantom breath tests was examined because the Medical Bureau of Road Safety – which supplies testing kits – essentially blew the whistle.

The bureau told the Garda in July 2014 that the number of tests the force was claiming to carry out was inflated because it was higher than the number of test kits it had supplied the Garda with.

While Ms O’Sullivan was acting commissioner at the time, having taken over in March 2014, it is unclear when she learned of the problem.

When the phantom testing continued and the phantom data continued to be published by the Garda for another 13 months, the bureau raised the matter more formally with the force.

And at that stage, in August 2015, the Garda agreed to do an audit, some of the detail of which was revealed at last Thursday’s press conference.

Four weeks ago, The Irish Times published a front-page news story stating the number of breath tests the Garda had claimed to carry out was greater than the number test kits supplied to it. The report also revealed an audit was under way.

Three days later, on February 23rd, Ms O'Sullivan and her team appeared before the Policing Authority.

At that hearing it emerged members of the authority knew nothing about the Garda audit until they had read it in The Irish Times. Authority member Moling Ryan said the agency was "extremely troubled" at learning something of such importance from a newspaper.

Authority chair Josephine Feehily expressed her disappointment at the existence of the audit having been kept from the authority.

Clearly, far from “admitting publicly” what was happening with the breath-test data audit, the Garda had kept it from the Policing Authority.

Data removed

At some point last year the Garda removed from its website the data it had published on drink-driving breath tests. However, no public statement was made when those figures were removed.

The commissioner delaying in releasing her statement until Saturday afternoon has the effect of undermining her claims that she is as committed to reforming and being open about mistakes made as she says she is.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said in Rome on Saturday that Ms O’Sullivan needed to make a statement acknowledging what had happened was unacceptable.

When some hours later she did exactly that, it appeared as though she had come out only after she was told she must.

All the while, no explanation or apology has been offered for a million breath tests that were never carried out appearing on the Garda’s computerised Pulse database.

Fianna Fáil, on whose support the Government depends, has said it is not satisfied by the information supplied by Ms O'Sullivan.

There is now a real whiff of cordite in air; we’re one very tiny spark – the most minor event or slip – away from another Garda Commissioner walking the plank.