Speed van firm took €7m in fines but ‘has little effect’
ALMOST €7million was generated in speeding fines last year by GoSafe speeding vans, according to new records.
However, former head of the Garda National Traffic Bureau, John O’Brien is claiming speed cameras operated by the company were having ‘little or no impact’ in reducing road deaths.
Retired garda John O’Brien questioned whether contracts awarded to the GoSafe consortium, which he estimated to total €160million, represent value for taxpayers’ money in a report he sent to the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee.
Fines totaled €6,908,680 in 2017, records released to the Irish Daily Show through the Freedom of Information Act show.
For the first ten months of 2018, some €4,296,280 has been earned from speeding fines.
The company sets up cameras at spots which have been identified as ‘high-risk’ areas for speedrelated road traffic collisions, the records show.
Gardaí have increased the number of speed enforcement zones across Ireland in recent years, with the total standing at 1,031 in May 2016. Speed cameras are deployed at these locations in a fleet of highly visible marked vans.
Prior to the introduction of the privately operated cameras, approximately 31% of fatal collisions occurred in these zones.
Run by an Isle of Man-based consortium, GoSafe has been providing a minimum of 6,000 hours of speed enforcement per month since 2010.
The consortium was paid €17.27million in 2017, of which €7.5million was recouped for the Exchequer through fines paid by motorists.
But the company was strongly defended by AA Roadwatch last night.
Its director of consumer affairs, Conor Faughnan, said: ‘It’s said to us often enough, that speed vans are a money-making racket. In our opinion, that is absolutely not true, not least because it actually costs the State money.
‘The amount of money raised in fine revenue doesn’t cover the cost of providing the service,’ he told The Mail. ‘The perfect speed camera prevents accidents, it doesn’t raise revenue. The better a camera does its job, the less money it makes. The more it reduces average speeds, the more accidents are prevented,’ added Mr Faughnan.
GoSafe, which operates 50 speed detection vehicles, was paid €1.2million per month to carry out speed checks, it emerged last year. A contract shows the company was paid a flat rate of almost €45,000 per month before a single vehicle was checked.
On top of this, a rate of €151.79 was paid per hour of speed monitoring, while €144.40 is paid for each surveying hour.
Monitoring can result in prosecutions, while surveying takes place to assess compliance with the speed limit in a particular area. No prosecutions arise from surveys.
Further charges applied for the purchase of specialist equipment and the cost of covering staff that have to attend court cases.
GoSafe provides 7,373 hours of speed monitoring each month. A minimum of 100 hours of surveying is also provided.
The contract ran for more than six years until May 2017. It has since been replaced by a new agreement. Details of which roads generated the most revenue were withheld by An Garda Síochána.
However, motorists on the N7 at Kill and Kill West in Kildare paid more than €340,000 in speeding fines between January and September 2016, the latest period for which figures are available.
A spokeswoman for An Garda Síochána said that the payments are collected on their behalf by An Post. ‘In the event that the income exceeds the costs of the contracts the excess is returned to the Exchequer,’ she said.
‘It is not a money making racket’