The Garda was informed almost three years ago that the number of drink driving breath tests it was claiming to carry out was too high, it has emerged.
The Medical Bureau of Road Safety formed the view in July 2014 that test numbers published by the Garda "did not add up" and informed the force at the time.
The Garda admitted on Thursday that just more than one million breath tests were carried out between 2012 and 2016, whereas it had previously claimed two million tests were conducted.
It has also emerged the Garda breached testing protocols in failing to record the number of tests carried out on each hand-held testing device. The bureau’s compliance with the protocols allowed the correct number to be collated.
Senior Garda management did not inform the Policing Authority of the existence of an audit into the exaggerated breath testing figures. Its members only learned of the audit's existence from a report in this newspaper last month.
The Garda was also forced this week to give details of how 146,000 motorists were wrongly summoned to court for road traffic infringements after they had already paid fixed charge notices.
Substantial legal costs
Some 14,700 were convicted and sanctions imposed. These convictions will all have to be set aside, giving rise to substantial legal costs and possible compensation claims.
The double controversy has plunged senior Garda management, particularly Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan, into fresh controversy. Ms O'Sullivan, who took over from her predecessor Martin Callinan in March 2014, has yet to make any comment on the new controversies.
Head of the Medical Bureau of Road Safety Prof Denis Cusack said that in July 2014 his agency realised the number of breath tests the Garda was claiming to carry out was higher than the number of disposable plastic mouth pieces purchased and which are needed for each test.
In August 2015, as publication of inflated data by the Garda continued, the bureau’s concerns were heightening and it decided to examine its own statistics. It was able to do this because it had been calibrating the testing devices down the years and maintaining records of the number of tests conducted on each device since the last recalibration.
“We looked at that and it appeared a certain number of tests appeared to have been done,” Prof Cusack told The Irish Times.
“We just alerted them and said ‘there appears to be a discrepancy . . . that from the devices, the number of tests carried out appears to be lower than on the public website’.
Concerns
“And the gardaí reacted and said they were going to look at it. And we helped them by giving all the information we had from all of our devices and they could cross check it against their system.”
Prof Cusack said it was not until the information emerged at the press conference on Thursday that it was confirmed to him the concerns he had first raised in July 2014 “had come to fruition”.
He also said that in July 2014, when the bureau believed the Garda was running short of plastic mouth pieces for testing, it soon emerged there were stockpiles of them. The bureau stopped buying them for two years, 2015 and 2016.
It appears the stockpiles arose because the the Garda was carrying out only half the tests it was claiming and was only using half the number of mouth pieces.
The bureau acquires and maintains breath-testing kits for the Garda. It recalibrates all hand-held testing devices about every six months to ensure the alcohol readings they are generating from breath samples are accurate.
