Many people where I come from and I suspect many others around the country feel a great deal of sympathy for the former Minister, Deputy Naughten. While we all understand the importance of correct procedures and scrupulousness when it comes to procurement, it is clear to me that the former Minister was very keen to pursue an important policy objective, namely, to deal with the scandal of the absence of sufficient broadband across the country, in rural areas in particular. I believe he should be commended on it.

I want to raise an issue that also arose last month concerning the number of arrests for drink-driving. In September it was reported that there was a discrepancy between the figures issued by An Garda Síochána and those released by the Central Statistics Office, CSO. We all know how important information is for good policy decisions. During discussions on the recent Road Traffic (Amendment) Act 2018, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, made a number of claims about the connection between accidents and deaths caused by drivers with a certain level of alcohol in their system, which provoked some debate. In May 2017 Deputy Tóibín submitted a parliamentary question to the Department of Justice and Equality about drink-driving arrest statistics. Incredibly, it took 16 months for the Department to reply, which raises a whole other issue. The reply showed a discrepancy of almost 15,000 arrests between Garda figures and CSO figures for the offence of drink-driving over the past ten or so years.

Did the Senator say there was a discrepancy of 15,000 between the two?

I understand the discrepancy was 15,000, but I will come back to the Leader on it. This revelation follows a far more serious discrepancy that emerged last year, when it was revealed that 89 homicides were not included in official statistics for a 14-year period due to what was called a process issue. The IT professionals investigating the matter felt intimidated and stonewalled by Garda officials when the red flag was raised on that matter.

Another strange feature of the more recent figures was that there was no breakdown available on the gender and age of those involved. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, said that this was because the collation of such data would require the expenditure of a disproportionate amount of Garda time. I do not pretend to be an IT expert, or an expert on statistics or the intricacies of the PULSE system, but if details of crimes and arrests are being placed on the Garda IT system, the addition of gender and date of birth of those arrested would not be particularly difficult information to find. As every citizen who interacts with a State agency in any way has his or her gender and date of birth recorded, it seems odd that a Garda system has no capacity to compile these details given the serious matters within its remit.

The Senator is in injury time.

I would be grateful if we could have an interaction with the Minister on this issue to establish what is being done to look at these discrepancies. We need to be precise about the discrepancies, what has caused them and what is being done to make sure they do not arise again. Can we be sure that in future, the Oireachtas will make fully informed policy decisions based on accurate and detailed information, which is obviously crucial to the process?