‘Staggering scale of gardaí being administratively sloppy’, says Garda Commissioner

Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan said the phantom breath test scandal could have been caused by gardaí not thinking it was “important” to accurately record the data.

The embattled commissioner told the Oireachtas justice committee that when gardaí were inputting breath test data — often days after the checkpoints — they either could “not remember the number or made it up”.

She gave the hypothesis when pressed by Fianna Fáil TD Jack Chambers and Fine Gael senator Martin Conway to explain the phantom breath test scandal. She was referring to the revelations that almost half of the 2m breath tests recorded by gardaí between 2011 and 2016 never actually occurred.