Ms Eileen O'Brien:

On behalf of the three of us, I thank the joint committee for giving us the opportunity to speak about the work in which we are involved in Cork. This visit had its beginnings in the visit that the Chairman, Deputy David Stanton, made to the project a number of weeks ago. He was quite impressed by what he saw and especially by what he heard from the lads whom he met and who spoke freely to him.

We work with ex-offenders, ex-prisoners and people on the edges of the criminal justice system. The men who present to us were, at one stage, small boys who were hurt and had to manage very difficult situations in their home environments and communities. The journey to where they are now was quite difficult. When we speak about ex-prisoners and ex-offenders, we conjure up a mental picture of what somebody like that looks like, but, from our experience, that mental picture is not the whole truth. They started out in their families and with parents just as we started out in ours and their parents had hopes and dreams for their children like we have for ours. The men in question had links across many Departments and agencies from a very young age and even their mothers and fathers were clients of the Department of Social Protection. They had an involvement with the HSE and the Department of Justice and Equality and, very early in their lives, were already on the edges of the education system. In terms of social disadvantage, they are a targeted group. A lot of transgenerational issues come into play in the lives of these men and we work in a very creative way to address some of these needs and issues. A core part of our work is to cut across these difficulties.

Addiction plays a big part in underpinning mid-range crime. It is a lonely, isolated and vulnerable place, even though it is not always seen on the outside. In the work we do we see the underbelly of addiction. Recovery is very tough, often lonely and very challenging and all of the men in our project are either recovering from addiction or making steps towards recovery. We, the footsoldiers on the ground, meet the raw reality of their lives. We look into their eyes and see the results of the difficulties in their lives. We are in direct contact with their struggle as they try to stay clean, sober up and stay out of trouble in order that they can manage themselves and their families. Many of them are fathers.

We work from a relationship model based on the Servol model piloted in the West Indies and brought to us through the congregations that are our trustees. We do not try to tell these guys how to be or what to do but support them to be self-reflective and self-determining and seek their own answers. We try to bring them into contact with their own goodness and potential. In the future we hope to continue to be resourced to do more of this work in an holistic way. One of the things we hope for from the meeting is that the committee will support new ways of working in this field. We believe what we do works really well and that there is a lot of evidence to show this. There is great potential for the model to be used in other areas because the difficulties we are meeting in Cork city are to be found in all communities across the country. We have met various challenges along the way and if any member of the committee wishes to ask questions about how we have overcome and met these challenges, we would be more than willing to answer.