Mr. Padraic Jones:

I thank the Deputy. There were a number of matters there. I will try to answer, but the Deputy should please feel free to come back.

On crimes against people with disabilities, we have developed a hate crime strategy. We have trained everyone in the organisation, as I mentioned earlier, in that regard. That is 18,000 people who now have an awareness of hate crime, of which anti-disability hate crime is one element. We have also put measures in place to try to encourage people to report that crime to us. I fully agree that it is highly under-reported. Unfortunately, because people do not report it, we do not have a metric by which we can measure it. What we have done is listen to the lived experiences of people and tried to put measures in place to improve our accessibility to them to be able to report crime to us. Therefore, they can report in the traditional way by coming to a Garda station and engaging with a garda. We have also allowed people to report hate crime online in order that, certainly in the initial stages, they do not have to go to a Garda station. Identifying that some people may have a fear of Garda stations or gardaí for whatever particular reason, we have reached out to some NGOs and civil society organisations, CSOs - quite a number in fact - to seek their assistance and get them to come on board with us and be trusted third-party partners in the context of receiving hate crime reports. We have signed a number of agreements with NGOs and CSOs to have them take reports of hate crimes from individuals. The NGO can forward a report to us and with the agreement of that third party and, obviously, the individual involved, we will address it as a crime.

In terms of people who are arrested, I want to be clear about what they are arrested for. If someone is detained under the Mental Health Act, he or she is taken to a Garda station immediately and as soon as he or she arrives at the Garda station, contact is made with a medical practitioner. We are very conscious we are not professionals in this regard and that it requires a trained professional to examine the individual. Subsequent to that examination taking place, we will either be told or informed that the practitioner has agreed to send that person to an approved medical facility or the practitioner will say the person is not approved to go and, at that stage, we release him or her immediately.