The recent Garda Inspectorate’s report on the penalty points saga is strong on analysis but weak on recommendations. It is readily agreed that its analysis of the problems relating to the cancellation policy of the Garda Síochána is accurate. This part of the processing system was badly broken. However, the recommendations have been accepted lemming-like by political opinion.
The negative political discourse has strangled a qualitative assessment of the report, which is a great pity because the same mistakes could be repeated. The business of road safety is best analysed over a three-to five-year time span where trends can be established.
The Fixed Charge Processing System (FCPS) of penalty points was directed at the appalling problem of road deaths. Some 20,323 people died on our roads between 1968 and 2013. This trend was significantly altered after Operation Lifesaver started in 1997 and greatly improved from 2001/2002 when penalty points were first introduced. The overall trend has been downward since 1997.
Under the FCPS, historically the number of fixed charge notices input varied between 400,000 and 500,000 per year. A small proportion of those notices directly affect road safety. An even smaller number relate to the cancelled speeding notices that have caused controversy.
The ignored GSOC report of 2009 identified systemic failings in the process systems, which were picked up in the Comptroller and Auditor General reports. Essentially the worst-behaving drivers could escape punishment by ignoring the system.
There are a number of problematic issues in the recent Garda Inspectorate report.
Enforcement
First, the inspectorate does not seem to consider road traffic enforcement a high priority for the Gard
a Síochána:
"
As currently structured, significant amounts of Garda resources are wasted unnecessarily with time-consuming administrative processing and operational inefficiencies dedicated
to a relatively minor part of the Garda Síochána's law enforcement responsibility
, albeit, an important aspect of road safety. As detailed earlier, millions of euro unnecessarily expended annually on administrative and personnel costs of the FCPS could be diverted to other operational activities" (author's emphasis).
Road safety
This conclusion is
wrong. The inspectorate does not seem to understand
that road safety is a core function of the
Garda and has been
for many years. Road safety has also been a good news story
as there has been a major reduction in the number of road deaths and injuries over the past decade.
Second, the i nspectorate recommends increased use of privatised speed vans and the abandonment of the Garda speed vans on economic grounds. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, the privatised system cost the State €11 million in its last accounting year. This hardly makes economic sense.
One key factor that has weakened the processing system is the failure to identify the driver at the earliest possible opportunity. The solution to this problem is simple because at the point of detection both the number of the vehicle and a photograph of the driver are instantly recorded. The current policy is to ignore the photographic evidence and to engage in an oblique and time-consuming search for the driver using databases and manual checks.
So the worst offenders escape. Surely the i nspectorate should have at least considered the possibility of using the photographic evidence?
At a strategic level the i nspectorate’s core proposal brings together all stakeholders in a Criminal Justice Working Group. This coalition, albeit without the name tag has presided over many of the deficiencies of the past.
Road safety needs to be managed and driven by one authority. Currently the Department of Justice and the Department of Transport exercise key roles: Justice for the Garda and Transport for road safety policy. In effect, no one is in strategic control.
It is a coalition of the willing or the unwilling depending on the vagaries of the moment. This group has no capacity to exercise executive authority or allocate and dispense funding. While no disrespect is intended to the g roup, it is by virtue of its construction a recommending group and not an executive one. Therefore it cannot execute any of the recommendations made by the inspectorate on substantive matters, even if they are correct.
A way has to be found to depoliticise road safety. Politicians should be "forbidden"
from claiming that short- term success is down to their political effort and leadership.
Det
Chief Sup
t (retired) John O'Brien was the f
irst h
ead of the Garda Traffic Policy Bureau; author of the 2009 GSOC report on FCPS and co-author of
Critique on Smithwick Report