Half of all photographs from fixed speed cameras are unusable, according to the Public Accounts Committee, in a report which has highlighted a series of inefficiencies in traffic enforcement procedures in the State.
The report also found that until last year, there was only a one in seven chance of a person being convicted of a penalty-point offence if a person refused to pay the initial on-the-spot demand and accept points on their licence.
It also found that there were no statistics collated nationally on the number of fatal road traffic collisions where drivers had alcohol in their system.
Yesterday chairman Michael Noonan said he had concerns that the current system may be unable to cope with the planned increase in penalty point enforcement activity, with the roll-out of privatised speed cameras, the increase in the Garda Traffic Corps and the addition of more than 30 new penalty point offences.
"In my view, a very good system ran into difficulty and this could have been prevented with proper planning," he said.
"It is under pressure in dealing with its first task, the pursuit of speeding drivers. If you add a couple of dozen additional offences, it seems to me that burden could prove very onerous on the system."
The Department of Justice yesterday acknowledged that there had been problems with the system initially but said these had been addressed with a new computerised system for penalty points in April and the planned roll-out of privatised speed cameras.
The report, the latest in a series based on the committee's weekly hearings, found that from October 31st, 2002, to December 31st, 2003, of the 87,000 fixed charged fines issued, payment was made in 48,553 or 56 per cent of cases. Of the 38,451 cases where drivers did not pay up and subsequently had penalty points attached to their licences, gardaí issued summonses in just 18 per cent of these cases.
The report also found that in this same 14-month period, an additional 5,500 fixed penalty court cases were dropped because they were "statute barred" due to the length of time it was taking the cases to come before the courts.
The report does note, however, that the pilot computerised penalty points and fixed charge system that was introduced in parts of the country in 2005, and has now been extended nationwide, led to a large increase in the number of offenders being issued with summonses.
This rose dramatically to 71 per cent of the 85,589, with fewer than 5 per cent of offences becoming statute-barred due to court delays.
The report found that there has been little improvement in efficiencies for the fixed speed camera system.
Faults were still evident in 2005, nearly three years after they were first identified by the Comptroller and Auditor General, who found that in 2003, almost half of the 107,000 car images taken were spoiled. The rate last year was 49 per cent of the 108,331 images.
The report also raised concerns about the ability of people driving company cars to avoid penalty points because their names are not registered to the cars. There were 4,127 cases of this in the greater Dublin area last year.
The report, which praised the penalty-point system, called for strict monitoring of the new computerised penalty points system and said there should be a single body in charge of the system, instead of two separate government departments and the Garda Síochána at present.
The AA said it was "shocked" but not surprised at the findings.