Mr. Mark Toland:

The follow-up is very important. What we have found is that, quite often, a victim is very pleased with the initial garda who comes and the service they get, but all that good work is lost when gardaí do not update a victim. Certainly, during the first few days after a crime, the victim wants a contact. There are then key events such as the arrest or charging of a suspect, or a court date, and we have found that, quite often, a victim is not told of these.

We have suggested there are IT solutions which will prompt an investigator. As an inspectorate, we are very committed to IT solutions. I do not believe the current PULSE system would allow us to put another IT system onto it, which is one of the reasons we did not recommend it. However, anything that provides online information to people is a terrific idea. This has been launched in some forces in the UK. It allows someone to get a progress report and I believe many of these things can be done just by having a system in place to prompt an investigator. Many victims I have spoken to want that face-to-face contact or a telephone contact because they want to ask questions behind the information and they want to know what is going happen next.

Many gardaí have spoken to us who are very frustrated because they struggle to keep the number of victims they are currently managing up to date. If they go off duty for four days and have not updated all of their victims, there is a period where victims are left waiting. Therefore, we welcome the victims offices. The Garda Síochána has committed itself to rolling out a single point of contact victims office in every division in Ireland, and there are currently three or four operating long-term pilots. That will allow a victim to pick up a telephone and ring a unit, and not have to try to find when an individual garda is going to be on duty. We welcome the victims offices because they will give victims a single number they can ring to find out what is happening to their crime.

The IT would be terrific but the Garda needs to invest significantly in technology to allow people to track their crime. We recommend in the report that crime information should be available to communities. They should be able to go onto a website to see how many crimes are taking place in their community and where they are taking place.

Those are some of the recommendations we make. I am very supportive of TrackMyCrime.