Sir, – You report (News, December 11th) that the offence of refusing to wear a face mask was added to the Garda fixed-charge notice (FCN) system last Monday, six weeks after this offence was created.
Apparently the information technology changes required to add house parties to the FCN system “are not complete”.
A few days earlier (News, December 2nd), you reported that multiple fraudulent claims for the pandemic unemployment payment were accepted, and payments (including arrears) made, notwithstanding that many of the claims were made from the same email address, and payments were made to the same bank account.
The IT system in the Department of Social Protection failed to detect these interesting patterns.
All this in the tech capital of Europe. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN ,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.