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02nd Dec 2017

Motorist driving at 240km had his penalty points cancelled

The penalty points scandal rumbles on.

Conor Heneghan

Yet another damning revelation from the GSOC report following an investigation of Fixed Charge Notice cancellations by An Garda Síochána.

A motorist driving at a speed of up to 240 km/h had a fixed charge notice for penalty points cancelled by An Garda Síochána, one of nearly 75,000 fixed charge cancellations in a four year period.

A report on the investigation, published by the Garda Síochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) on Friday, made a number of findings of widespread exploitation of failings in the system used by An Garda Siochána in a four-year period from 2009 to 2012 (inclusive).

The investigation details that while vehicles travelling at speeds between 61km/h and 80km/h in 50km/hr zones accounted for 51 per cent of all cancellations (20,462), there was one cancellation for a vehicle driving at a speed between 221-240km/hr.

There were also four cancellations of fixed charge notices for vehicles travelling at speeds between 181-200km/h, 99 cancellations for vehicles travelling at speeds between 141-160km/h and 748 cancellations for vehicles travelling at speeds between 121-140km/h.

Dublin had the highest number of cancellations in that period with 25,173, followed by Cork (8,253), Limerick (4,166), Clare (3,646) and Galway (3,500).

The report also revealed that one member of An Garda Síochána was responsible for the cancellation of over 700 fixed charge notices for penalty points across 17 counties in a four-year period.

You can read the GSOC report in full here.