Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications

Joint Sitting with the Joint Comittee on Justice, Defence and Equality
Pro-Social Drivers Programme: Pro-Social Ireland

11:00 am

Mr. Gary Doggett:

That is an interesting question. There have been some developments recently. The Probation Service has bought into our services to a significant extent in the last year or two. We have a board member from the Probation Service, which has recommended our course to a judge on the other side of the Border in Derry. He accepted our evaluations in one case in the past. Two more cases are pending. It has been recommended that two clients attend our course. We have had very good international co-operation so far. When we were setting out on this journey, we looked at much of what is going on in other countries. We were very conscious of providing a good service. We wanted to see what is working in other areas. One of the original authors of the reasoning and rehabilitation model, which was mentioned earlier by Mr. McFadden and is well recognised internationally, is based in Estonia. He very kindly came over, basically at cost, to deliver training for some of our facilitators. We have had massive buy-in from those guys as well. As I mentioned earlier, the authorities in the Czech Republic have more or less handed us the programme they use within their prison system.

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