Nearly 50 per cent of all photographs taken by garda speed cameras since 2003 were spoiled and rendered useless, according to the latest Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report.
The Committee's seventh interim report - which examined the operation of the penalty points system as part of a wider analysis of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform - found that for the 14-month period to December 2003, 107,000 camera images were taken, of which almost half, 50,000, were spoiled.
Of 108,331 images were taken during 2005 in the fixed-charge processing system pilot areas of which 49,996 or 46 per cent did not result in the issue of a fixed charge notice due to administration errors.
The study also found that only one in seven of those who did not pay on initial demand ultimately paid a fine or had four penalty points attached to his or her licence.
The PAC said: "Some of the problems that arose during the early stages have been dealt with by the company providing the cameras."
But it recommended that there should be "a target performance figure in terms of the efficiency of the equipment and whether modifications need to be made to attain optimum results".
The PAC report found that information on whether persons who died on the roads had alcohol in their system does not feed back officially into the system because that data is the property of the coroner.
The information would form part of the overall investigation into a fatal crash.
But at present, the report said, there was no statistical information available on the blood alcohol or drug content of victims regardless of why a crash has happened.