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THE FORMER NORTHERN Ireland Police Ombudsman has questioned how garda management accounted for the extra man hours generated by the one million phantom breath tests that were logged on their system.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme Nuala O’Loan expressed concern that the organisation was alerted to the issue as early as April 2014, but no action was taken at the time.
“There were 937,000 over reported roadside breath tests. So if they just took five mins each, which probably is a fair assumption for stopping a car, speaking to a driver etc, and if there were two guards present on each occasion, which would be the norm, you’re talking about something in the order of 150,000 garda hours over that five-year period. That’s 30,000 garda hours a year,” O’Loan pointed out.
Something should have been alerting them that either their statistics were wrong, or their manpower planning was wrong because the conduct of the breath tests should have been part of manpower planning. It’s just mind-boggling that this could have happened.
“The whole planning and funding of the guards is predicated on the work that they do and I think in that situation, it seems unlikely to me that erroneous statistics are going to be limited to these three or four areas,” she added.
O’Loan said she believed trust between gardaí and the public had been “seriously undermined” by recent scandals. She called for a fully independent inquiry to investigate how this occurred.
Speaking to the same programme, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe said the government does depend on An Gard Síochána for data when it is assessing crime trends and what is needed to address them.
He was also questioned about the potential costs that will be incurred by the State because of summonses that were wrongly issued to thousands of drivers.
“I can’t at this time ascertain what the potential cost could be. The reason for that is the individual circumstances of each case or potential case will be different,” he said.
He confirmed the precedent is that this money would come from “the policy area in which the issue is generated” – in this case that would be the Department of Justice.
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It isn’t job creation it is job displacement with less regulation. Along with readily available tax avoidance
Bingo. Hailo works for everyone. Über works for Über.
So Uber want to creat 50000 jobs if cities play ball.
In other words if the city councils do away with rules and regulations and let Uber do what they like.
Another case of big business calling the shots .
No thanks
I wouldn’t use an Uber car. It’s an unregulated taxi services that can charge what it likes at peak times. Dodgy.
Uber wants it all.. 50000 k jobs earning crap pay ..
Creation of jobs is great.
uber seem like they are aggressive and
not your usual app based company and i
think they will fall as quick as they rise.
It’s interesting how little traction Uber has in Ireland. Just goes to show the benefits of deregulation.
You have to go through the taxi companies here, so its not the real model. It’s unbelievable that taxi companies here would worry about the safety of passengers if Uber was opened up properly. There are some beauties driving taxi’s around Dublin.
Uber should be shut down unlicensed drivers is a disaster waiting to happen !
It has basically failed in Dublin too as it had to resort to using taxis to operate it’s service..
Have used Uber’s standard service here too. It basically operates here as a hackney service, operated on your phone with some added value, and it’s fine.
The Uber Black type service with random driver pick-up thing is the issue and to be honesty I see the challenges. I don’t think I’d use it.
I tend to try and avoid taxis like the plague… I’m sure as hell not going to pay over the odds for one … I can’t see Uber picking up much traction here.
Uber app needs access to your photos and camera..taxi..!
Use uber in the US regularly. Fantastic service and so cheap.
How many days left till their bubble bursts? 34.5bn ??
The ubers can’t use bus lanes
have your say