Following today's Oireachtas Justice Committee, gardaí have this evening clarified that the last claim for a bonus payment for senior officers was made for activities in the year 2007.

They say the scheme was ended by the Department of Finance in 2009.

Gardaí say they do not believe senior officers were paid for breath tests and are clarifying the situation regarding checkpoints.

Earlier, Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan said she would get back to the committee about whether or not senior officers were paid bonus payments/performance related payments for checkpoints and breath tests.

She told the committee that some of the divisional policing targets were related to traffic and the purpose was to reduce deaths on the roads.

However, she said she would have to get back to them about whether bonus payments were paid for such activities.

This evening, gardaí said that no bonus payment was made to current members of the garda executive. The scheme, they said, applied to people of the rank of assistant commissioner and upwards.

A garda spokesperson said there is no indication that there were specific targets for the amount of checkpoints and/or breath tests conducted.

The spokesperson said targets were generally related to reducing road deaths, the introduction of improved road safety measures including targeted traffic operations, and working with partners such as the Road Safety Authority to implement the National Road Safety Strategy.

Commissioner O'Sullivan appeared before the committee today, a week after gardaí announced they had discovered almost one million false breath tests and 14,700 wrongful convictions.

She accepted that gardaí may have acted dishonestly by inputting false breath test figures into the garda computer system.

However, she told the committee that gardaí have still not established the reasons why almost a million false breath tests were recorded.

As it happened: Garda Commissioner before Oireachtas Committee

Garda Commissioner Noírín O'Sullivan apologises for the wrong-doings and controversies over the last decade. pic.twitter.com/Ylz14PGErb — RTÉ News (@rtenews) March 30, 2017

"At worst that was deception, and at best was incompetence"- Ms O'Sullivan talks about false breath tests pic.twitter.com/7BbtpzCJ1z — RTÉ News (@rtenews) March 30, 2017

The Garda Commissioner went to Leinster House this morning where a majority of the members, not just in the Dáil but also in the committee she appeared before, have no confidence in her.

Ms O'Sullivan opened her contribution with an apology for the latest controversy in the force.

She told the committee: "On behalf of An Garda Síochána, I sincerely apologise for the grave mistakes and wrongdoing during the last decade that have led to the two controversies we are here today to discuss.

"Those mistakes and wrongdoings are unacceptable in policing terms, unacceptable in ethical terms, unacceptable in terms of public trust, and, most critically, unacceptable to the advocacy and support groups involved in road safety and to those who were wrongly brought to court."

She added: "They have raised serious issues about how we managed the service, how certain gardaí operated on the ground and their supervision.

"Given the scale of these issues, they can't simply be blamed on one individual or one area. It is a collective failure. From top down to bottom up.

"We all take responsibility for this, and all take responsibility for establishing how this happened and ensuring it cannot happen again."

Some deputies were not happy and wanted to know if bonuses and performance targets were a factor in the exaggeration of the figures.

The commissioner said that some divisional officers' performance targets which led to bonuses were connected to reductions in road deaths. She said that a hypothesis may well be that the recording of data on the mandatory alcohol checkpoints, which she said were preventative measures, was not seen as important in the detection of offences.

Senior gardaí told the committee they were not coming in to make things up or cover them up but to apologise for previous mistakes and put things right.

However, some deputies are dissatisfied that no one, particularly the commissioner, has been held accountable.

Ms O'Sullivan said she was taking responsibility and pointed out that there is a statutory framework that can hold her to account that is set out in legislation.

She said all senior managers have committed to delivering on the reform programme, delivering a modern and professional police force.

The commissioner also said it takes courage, determination and drive to do this at times of crisis.

The officer in charge of roads policing, Assistant Commissioner Michael Finn, insisted there was no competition between garda regions to see who had the highest figures.

He said he was satisfied with the accuracy of the data on checkpoints. He also said it was an error on his part that the Minister for Justice was not informed.

Commissioner's answers 'disappointing'

Fine Gael's Colm Brophy has said he believes An Garda Síochána did not grasp the seriousness of the problem with falsified statistics for road traffic offences quickly enough and were still slow to deploy resources to deal with it once the systematic nature of the matter became clear.

Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Mr Brophy said the answers given to the justice committee by the commissioner were "quite disappointing".

Mr Brophy, who is a member of the committee, also questioned the attitude of management not to flag the matter sooner with the Department of Justice and the Policing Authority; he said this is not acceptable in the current era.

He said he believes there was a lack of willingness or emphasis to take on board the extent and seriousness of this problem much earlier. It is not satisfactory to blame it on lack of resources or people, he said.

If the commissioner had applied the same level of resources and seriousness to the problem a year or 18 months ago as she is now doing, he said it could have prevented the current problem.

He said none of the committee members are satisfied with the answers being given to try to explain how almost one million extra breath tests were recorded.

Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty said that An Garda Síochána did not act with the "appropriate concern" when it became aware of the falsifying of breath tests in 2014.

Speaking on RTÉ's Drivetime, he said he is not sure whether an internal audit will find out how it happened and who is responsible.

Mr Doherty said that revelations surrounding fixed charge notices will have severe consequences and he believes there is a question mark surrounding all data coming from An Garda Síochána.

He restated that he believes Commissioner O'Sullivan should step aside.