Mr. Paul McCusker:

We have been an organisation for approximately three years and are looking to harness the success of the programme to date. We are looking to mainstream it. The key strengths of the programme are as follows. We have a relationship with the Judiciary and statutory bodies, including the Garda and ambulance service, which is very positive. We are seeking to offer them two things; in particular the Judiciary. Those are certainty and consistency. It is not enough for a judge to think a course is going to run, he or she must know it will. Currently, we run courses on demand and have run three so far this year on a voluntary basis. We would like to offer certainty. We would also like to roll the programme out on the basis of certainty. Second, as a community group, our board is voluntary. We have councillors and representatives from the business community. We are very sensitive to the needs of all members of the community. That is one of our key things. Within the group itself, it is very much person-led and person-centred and that requires resources. It will require investment. Our hope from today is that the joint committee will make positive representations to the Department to enable us to grow the programme. This morning, we have had a huge amount of interest from other counties about coming down to develop programmes. We have been asked to come down and talk to people. There is a need for a programme such as this. We do not see ourselves in competition with other activities but as a complement to them by bringing a different perspective to bear. On a more international stage, we have been approached from other countries including the Czech Republic, Estonia and Austria.

There is a great deal of learning going on in this area. By no means does anyone know all the answers. We can look at them together, however. In terms of the ongoing challenges, texting is becoming more and more of an issue. We will need strategies to address that. The RSA has some phenomenal advertisements which are scary on the distance a car can travel in 15 seconds while a person is texting. These are issues in respect of which we will have to adapt our programme. We are also getting invitations from groups outside the road traffic area to see if we can adapt our programme for their needs. We would like to invest time in doing that. The approach we have applied to road safety can also be applied to other areas, including public order offences and within schools to address cyberbullies. Those who are doing the cyberbullying need to be dealt with as well as the victims. We see those areas as ones we would like to explore in partnership with other groups. We have always adopted a partnership-based approach to developing this model. Mr. Doggett and Mr. McFadden in particular have worked very closely with other organisations. We are members of the road safety working group in Donegal and liaise with anybody who is in this area. We need and would like to get the resources and space to do that.

The programme has been very successful and the window of opportunity is there right now and should be taken advantage of. We have a loose plan to develop this. Phase 1 involves a pilot programme in seven counties. This is the proposal we put to the Minister, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, when we met him in Donegal two months ago. It is a geographic but also a rural thing. The seven counties are around Donegal as that is where we are based, but it would be moved down then and eventually come to Dublin in 2020. It will take five years to plan and come into an area with a working programme. Over the past five years, we have developed a way of working that is very much based on dialogue with the major stakeholders in the community. We liaise with the judges and gardaí and we do not prescribe. Everybody is involved and anybody who wants a say has one. Mr. McFadden will talk about how the programme runs, but it is very much a partnership-based approach. We have no statutory powers and we do not want any. It is in essence a group of people getting together in a room to discuss something which is of huge importance to everybody. We would like to take it from there. Outside of the numbers, the success of the programme is that all of those who have done the courses continue to speak very positively about what they learned quite a while later. That cannot be quantified.