Wexford didn’t inflate breath test figures

THERE’S a lot of head scratching going on in senior garda circles about how Wexford Garda Division recorded only a five per centre discrepency in its breath test figures when some garda divisions were as high as 500 per cent.

Wexford is the only Garda division that did not inflate its breath test figures, according to an internal garda investigation.

The discrepency between the numbers of breath tests gardai claimed to have carried out and accurately recorded on breathalysers was five per cent in the Wexford Garda Division, which is within the margin of error.

Chief Superintendent John Roche said Wexford Garda Division acknowledged the publication of the breath test figures for Wexford and in particular the five per cent discrepency over the five-year period, how- ever, he said he was not yet in a position to comment further.

‘I will await the final conclusion of the internal inquiry set up by the commissioner and carried out by the assistant commissioner before I make a more detailed comment,’ the chief superintendent told this newspaper.

At the weekend, the Sunday Independent quoted an informed source as saying there is a growing acceptance that gardai entered false information on breath tests in the Pulse system.

Commissioner Noreen O’Sullivan publicly acknowledged that this may well be the case and has so far been unable to explain why the Pulse database recorded almost two million completed breath tests while only 1,058.157 were carried out between October 2011 and December 2016.