Varadkar questions handling of penalty points affair

The Minister for Transport has questioned the response to the penalty points affair of both Minister for Justice Alan Shatter and the Garda.

A week after Mr Shatter asked the Garda Ombudsman Commission to investigate the debacle, Leo Varadkar said yesterday that the ombudsman should have been sent in a year ago.

While the matter was the subject of investigations within the Garda, Mr Varadkar suggested that internal inquiries lack credibility.

There was little by way of a response from Mr Shatter last night to Mr Varadkar's remarks, made in an interview on Today FM's Last Word programme.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said there was nothing to add to Mr Shatter’s statement on his decision to seek an inquiry.

Although Mr Shatter argued last week that it would have been an “abuse of the legislation” to send in the Garda Ombudsman Commission sooner, he said the dynamic had changed because the Garda was now involved in a “completely undesirable” political controversy.

However, Mr Varadkar said the ombudsman commission should have been brought in at a much earlier date.

“I don’t want to get into a conflict with the Garda Commissioner or with my colleagues in Government,” he said, “but the record does show and I was asked this question on radio probably about a year ago now, as to whether I thought that the investigation should go to the Garda Ombudsman Commission and I said at the time that I did.

“And I really do think that would have been the right thing to do in the first instance.”

Internal inquiries into such matters were no longer acceptable to the people, he said.

"It's just the 21st century Ireland that we live in – nobody trusts people to investigate themselves. It's just not the way things are done any more," the Minister said.

“That’s going to require a bit of a change and a culture shift but more and more if there is an issue, people expect an investigation to be independent.”

Mr Varadkar said he was pleased to hear that the evidence last week to the Public Accounts Committee of Garda Sgt Maurice McCabe, one of two Garda whistleblowers, pointed to a reduction in the cancellation of penalty points.

“I’m happy that things have definitely changed,” Mr Varadkar said, “and one of the things that I know was discussed in the PAC hearing when . . . the whistleblower spoke to the PAC was what his view was on how the system is operating – the new revised system.

“And from what I’ve been told anyway,” the Minister added, “the indications are that he’s very happy that the new system is working and the practices that were happing in the past are not happening any more.”