Garda Commissioner 'cannot discuss individual penalty points cases'

The Garda Commissioner says he will not answer questions before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee relating to a “box of evidence” allegedly containing information on widespread abuse of the penalty points system.

Martin Callinan, who will appear before the PAC on Thursday, has written to committee saying he remains “very concerned” that the files in question “should be subject to unauthorised disclosure”.

He said his function in attending the committee is to discuss the Comptroller and Auditor General Report on the penalty points issue from earlier this year, which found that one-in-five motorists caught for fixed-charge notices managed to escape fines.

The information currently in the possession of the committee is understood not to have been available when the Comptroller and Auditor General& report was carried out.

The box, supplied to the PAC by a Garda whistleblower, has been at the centre of a dispute between Mr Callinan and the PAC since he wrote to the committee in November, demanding its return “forthwith”.

The commissioner made his annoyance known to the PAC chairman, John McGuinness, following a report in the Irish Examiner that the committee had received a volume of documentation which it believed could shine a light on how millions of euro was being lost to the State by a failure to properly implement the penalty points system.

“I am of the view that these files, containing personal data, are files which I am responsible for and accordingly should be returned forthwith to me,” said Mr Callinan in a letter dated Nov 21, 2013.

The committee received legal advice that it could only look at whether, or how, the State was losing money as a result of all-eged abuse of the system, and not personal information — which has since been redacted.

In a letter to the clerk of the PAC, Ted McEnery, last week, Mr Callinan said the An Garda Síochána Act 2005 “does not authorise your committee to receive sensitive, personal data which has been disclosed without the authorisation of the relevant data controller”.

The position set out in his earlier letter — which was backed by the data protection commissioner — “is quite clear”, he said. “I cannot put the matter further than that.”

Mr Callinan said his function in attending the Committee this week is to discuss the Comptroller and Auditor General report on the issue and “not in relation to individual exercise of prosecutorial discretion, whereby fixed charge notices may have been cancelled”.

He said: “I should make clear that I cannot, in my forthcoming attendance at the PAC, discuss individual cases.”

“As I have already said, I believe those files should be returned to me as data controller.

“They should then be reviewed by the Comptroller and Auditor General, should he wish, to supplement his report on the controls, systems, procedure, and practices in relation to the fixed-charge notices.”

“I could then address such a supplemental report if your committee were to request me to attend to discuss.”