Gardaí have been forced to refund motorists caught speeding on one of the State's busiest roads and remove penalty points from their licences because an incorrect limit was being enforced, The Irish Timeshas learned.
The error came to light after a motorist, who was detected driving above the 80km/h limit on a stretch of the M1 in 2006, queried it with the garda who restored his clean driving record last April.
According to gardaí who wrote to the motorist, an "administrative error" meant that correct bylaws to allow the Traffic Corps to enforce the 80km/h limit on the section of motorway near Dublin city centre were not put in place by the local authority.
The 80km/h stretch of the road between the Port Tunnel and the airport turn-off is notoriously busy, with traffic merging from the north, the M50, the airport, the city centre and the Port Tunnel.
The speed limit drops from 120km/h to 80km/h in the area.
It is regularly patrolled by gardaí in unmarked vehicles, and gardaí also use Gatso speed cameras parked underneath bridges, at the side of the road, to catch speeding motorists.
However, in a letter to the motorist, who was caught speeding by a Gatso camera near Santry in August 2006, Chief Superintendent John Farrelly thanks him for contacting them, and apologises for the "inconvenience caused" by the error.
"Due to an administrative error, whereby the relevant bylaws were not in force, a decision was made to refund all paid notices and have penalty points expunged from all affected driving licence files," the letter, dated March 2007, explains.
In a second letter in April 2007, from the Road Safety Authority (RSA), the same motorist is told that the penalty points "endorsed in error on your driving licence record in respect of an alleged offence have been removed, following instruction from An Garda Síochána."
It is not the first time a mix-up between gardaí and local authorities has allowed motorists who were caught speeding to escape fines and penalty points, but it is perhaps the busiest road to be affected by such an error.
In October 2006, hundreds of motorists in Co Louth learned they were to be refunded fines and have points expunged in similar circumstances. A speed limit on a stretch of the R132 road near Drogheda was increased from 80km/h to 100km/h in April 2006.
The correct bylaws were put in place by the local authority, but gardaí continued to enforce the old limit because the old signs were left in place.
In another case, doubts over the legality of the speed limit on the N11 through Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow over the 19 months from April 2004 to November 2005, led to a District Court judge striking out 86 such cases in February 2006.
Almost 400 motorists were caught by fixed cameras and a Garda Gatso van in the area.
Since penalty points were introduced in 2002, more than 450,000 penalty point notices have been issued for the offence of speeding, which is by far the most common offence detected under the points system.
More than 130,000 of these notices have been issued to drivers with no driver number, meaning they either had no licence or held a licence from another country.
It emerged last week that the Garda contract for eight "Gatso-style" vans to be used in covert detection remains unfilled almost one year after it was announced. A €25 million-plus privatised speed camera contract also remains unfilled.
