Up to one in five road traffic offenders, involved in some 170,000 offences, were able to avoid penalties due to ‘significant weaknesses’ in the fixed charge notice system, which the Garda Síochána ‘urgently’ needs to address.

A former garda is to be sentenced later for stealing money from his colleagues and from an 82-year-old woman whose house had been burgled.

Gardaí in Dublin have recaptured a man who escaped from Fitzgibbon Garda Station in the north of the city this morning.