Mr. Gary Doggett:

Good afternoon. I thank members for inviting us to this meeting to discuss our project. My name is Gary Doggett and I am the co-ordinator of the Pro-Social drivers programme. With me today is our chairman, Mr. Mick Quinlivan, a retired garda with 31 years of experience who is currently working in the community and voluntary sector, specifically mental health, disability and youth. Our treasurer, Mr. Paul McCusker, is a lecturer in business studies and community development. He is also the treasurer of the Donegal Youth Service and Youth Work Ireland at national level. Our lead facilitator is Mr. Martin McFadden, who is sitting at the end. He is an integrative counsellor and a founder of the Friends of Bill W Club in Donegal, which is a support centre for the recovery community. He is highly regarded within mental health and addiction services and works on a daily basis with challenging clients who present with behavioural issues. He is also a trained facilitator and trainer. My field is adult education. I have an honours BA in community development and have written a thesis on strategies to reduce reoffending.

The aim of the Pro-Social drivers programme is to reduce the number of deaths on our roads. We also want to reduce road traffic reoffending and to avoid an escalation of offences that lead to criminal records. The year 2012 saw the first year-on-year increase in fatalities on our roads since 2005. These numbers represent human lives and devastation to families. From the justice perspective, there were more than 24,000 convictions for road traffic offences in 2012. These are members of our community. We are trying to reduce the number of perpetrators and victims of road traffic offences.

Donegal has a recent and tragic history in terms of road safety. It was against this backdrop that, in 2012, our organisation was approached by representatives of the criminal justice system in Letterkenny with a view to putting together a driver rehabilitation programme to try to reduce the high incidence of anti-social driving behaviour in the county. All of the research that we have seen to date as well as our personal experiences have shown that it is generally personal factors rather than technical skill that are the main cause of risky or careless driving behaviour. With this in mind, we put together a course that took into consideration four factors that we believed would be the most conducive to safe driving. These are emotional control, social responsibility, driving under the influence and the consequences of anti-social driving behaviour.

Our clients are generally referred to us by judges, the Probation Service or solicitors.

This is a key strength of the programme in that it is an indication of the integrity of the work we are doing and of the trust placed in us by professionals in this area.

We meet our clients on a one-to-one basis to discuss what they need to do to complete the programme. They then attend three-hour modules delivered over a four-week period. After the initial induction is a module on emotional control which addresses the way that we respond to certain situations while behind the wheel. The next module is on social responsibility which looks at the responsibility we all have as members of our communities. This is followed by a module on driving under the influence. This module is very important as we find that many of the younger people with whom we deal have poor skills in peer refusal. We try to give people the skills whereby they can learn to say "No" to their friends and encourage their friends to drive in a safer manner. The last module is on the consequences of anti-social driving behaviour. Since the outset, our thoughts have been mainly with road traffic victims. With this in mind, we have always wanted to create a space in which victims can voice their own pain and explain what they have been through. Generally, we invite someone who has lost a loved one, someone who has been in a bad collision or a representative of the emergency services to give a talk on the last module.

To date, we have run 12 courses which have been successfully completed by 110 people. So far, we are informed that only one person has reappeared before the courts. It is our understanding that probation-led reports have shown that the recidivism rate for road traffic offences is in the region of 28% within two years. The majority of those offences occur within the first year. International research has shown that driver rehabilitation programmes can reduce reoffending by up to 50%. I will now pass the joint committee to our treasurer, Mr. Paul McCusker, who will set out our strategy for moving forward.