Almost half of motorists caught speeding on fixed Garda cameras are not fined or prosecuted, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) has found.
In his annual report, the C&AG found that between the start of the penalty points sytem for speeding - on October 31st, 2002 - and December 12th, 2003, 50,567 (47 per cent) out of 107,636 films or videos from Garda cameras were deemed to have been "spoiled".
The C&AG said he had been informed that the majority of these cases related to dirty, obscured, or damaged number plates. Motor cycles, foreign-registered vehicles and emergency vehicles also made up some of the numbers, the 2003 annual report found.
Technical problems with the cameras, which also accounted for some of the spoilt images, included dirty lenses, poor weather conditions, obstruction of the lens, problems with developing the images and computer-related problems.
The Garda reported that there had been 235 cases where vehicles detected speeding were company cars and where the penalty points accruing to the drivers could not be allocated to specific driver files.
Images deemed to have been spoilt mean the driver committing the alleged offence will escape fine or prosecution. The level of spoilt images was "a matter of concern" to the Garda, the C&AG reported.
However, a number of the issues that led to the spoilt images have been addressed, the C&AG reports, leading to a reduction in the spoil rate in the first five months of 2004.
In the course of the C&AG's review of the penalty points system, it was found that of the 87,004 fixed-charge notices issued from October 31st, 2002, to the end of December 2003, payments of fines were received in only 48,553 (56 per cent) cases. This accounted for €6,147,450.
Of 7,059 summonses for non-payment of fines, 1,523 were not proceeded with on the instructions of the Director of Public Prosecution.
