Senior garda management kept the force’s own internal financial watchdog in the dark about controversies relating to bogus breath tests and traffic fines being wrongly imposed on motorists, it has emerged.
The garda audit committee has expressed concern at the failure to notify it about significant discrepancies that were known within senior ranks in the force last year.
The committee became aware of the issue only in March, when details of how gardaí exaggerated by almost one million the number of breath tests carried out over a five-year period were made public.
Gardaí also revealed that more than 14,000 drivers would have their convictions quashed for motoring offences because they were incorrectly issued with a court summons when they had already paid a fixed-charge notice.
In the audit committee’s latest annual report, Cyril Sullivan, the chairman, said the group was “very concerned that it was totally unaware of either issue”. “It was placed in the unusual position of being unable to offer any view concerning the implication of either issue,” he said.
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Mr Sullivan, the director of finance and support services at the Institute of Public Administration, said both issues were unresolved and he recommended that the incoming audit committee should seek “full explanations” from garda management.
Commenting on the latest revelation Alan Kelly, a Labour TD, said: “This story is just ongoing, I find it unbelievable.” He told RTÉ Radio One’s This Week that it was clear that the relationship between senior gardaí and the force’s internal auditors was not functioning properly. “The passing of information from one to the other to the level required isn’t happening,” he said.
Mr Kelly claimed that the failure of information being passed on to garda auditors had become a common theme at hearings of the Dáil public accounts committee (PAC) this year.
He said that the PAC should also have been provided with a copy of the audit committee’s annual report once it had been completed in May because it was relevant to some hearings from recent months.
A garda spokesman said last night that the role of the independent audit committee was highly valued within the force. “We will seek to ensure it is kept fully informed of any issues relevant to its work,” he added.
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The audit committee expressed particular concern at the failure to notify it about the fixed-charge notice issue because the internal audit unit had been examining the administration of its fines system throughout last year.
The committee, whose members include Dónall Ó Cualáin, the deputy garda commissioner, said it was unable to publish its annual report for 2016 by its deadline of the end of March because of the revelations regarding the breath tests and fixed charge penalty notices.
On the issue of potentially serious shortcomings in financial controls at the Garda College in Templemore, which emerged in a separate internal garda audit report in 2016, the committee said it regarded its findings as “a serious matter”.
The internal audit report said it could provide only limited assurance that financial controls at the college were compliant with public procurement legislation.