Ms Fíona Ní Chinnéide:

I thank Deputy O'Brien. All his points are pertinent. I will begin with his point on HIQA. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture stated in its report of November 2015 on its last visit to Ireland, in 2014, that health care conditions in some prisons were in a state of crisis. Prior to that, the committee called for an independent audit and oversight of prison health care. We are extremely concerned about the state of prison health care. The committee mentioned HIQA. The strategic review of penal policy implementation oversight group stated in its report that HIQA has said it cannot currently do it as proposed. This is very disappointing. If it is only a question of resources, those resources should follow. For some other reason, this needs to be explored. At a minimum, we believe the Department of Health should be involved in commissioning an independent external audit of prison health care. Ultimately, we believe responsibility for prison health should move to the Department of Health. The lack of independent external oversight and published reports from which we can tease out that there is public scrutiny and accountability across the whole system is often the basic issue.

With regard to committals, last year saw the highest number of individuals sent to prison, at 14,182.

This relates to 17,206 committals. We have not seen this level since around 2011-2012 when we thought committals had reached their peak.

Fines and committals affect these figures. Last year, 9,883 committals were for fines. The Fines (Payment and Recovery) Act 2014 was only finally implemented in January of this year. We will not know the full impact until the annual report of the Irish Prison Service is published in the spring or summer. Last week, the director general of the Irish Prison Service gave evidence to the Committee of Public Accounts. On that occasion he said that there had been a 15% reduction in fines committals during 2016. It is a positive move but only brings the number down to about 8,000 fines committals. We have called for an amnesty in the past. There are hundreds and perhaps 1,000 outstanding warrants for fines. This matter needs to be addressed. It is a completely damaging and wasteful practice. In most cases people are committed to prison for just a small number of hours because they do not present a risk to society. These are people where the judge, in the original case, decided that prison was not an appropriate punishment for the offence committed. When one removes the fines committals from the figures, the number of people sentenced by the courts rose by a smaller amount in 2015, across almost all sentence lengths.

We are concerned about the drop in the annual number of community service orders. Research must be conducted into the reason for the decrease. The Irish Penal Reform Trust, IPRT, has commissioned a Iongitudinal, long-scale, three-year report that we will publish in April. We will welcome an opportunity to present its findings to the committee at that time. The report focused on the lack of provisions. We found that there was an inconsistent provision of community service orders or an inconsistent use of them by the courts throughout the country, a fact that needs to be addressed.

The Probation Service in its 2014 report found that the average cost of a probation order was €5,000 and a community service order cost in the region of €2,500. The community payback or work that was done in the community was not included in the assessment. Crimes are committed in the community so it is good that there is a community payback.

The Probation Service, also in its 2014 report, calculated the hours of community work conducted through the community return programme. It estimated that community service orders were worth €4.5 million to the community. That is a significant sum that must be considered. Prison is often spoken about as a cost-neutral solution to crime. It costs just under €70,000 per prison per annum, not including education and other costs.

We strongly welcomed the introduction of the Parole Bill 2016 by Deputy O'Callaghan. We look forward to making submissions and detailed amendments in this regard.

I was unaware of the Sentencing Council Bill and thank Deputy Jonathan O'Brien for flagging it.

Bail is always a controversial issue in the media. For example, the Department of Justice and Equality has mentioned Garda statistics that claim 75% of burglaries were committed by 25% of offenders. The data and evidence to support the claim have not been published. Therefore, we need to see the data and evidence on which policies are based.

A fundamental principle of our justice system is that one is innocent until proven guilty. Prison should be a sanction of last resort in all cases and particularly pre-trial or before one has been convicted. Having said that, there are reports that there are high offending rates while people are on bail. This matter needs to be addressed sensibly and effectively. We believe that where a judge believes there is a high likelihood that a further offence will be committed, the first resort should be tailored conditions and an individualised approach to bail conditions. The IPRT has conducted research on bail courts and conditions handed down. We have found that there tends to be a whole suite of bail conditions handed out to every individual before the courts and that they are not tailored to individuals' needs.

Bail supports have been proven to reduce offending by people who are out on bail. We need to shorten the time between arrest, charging and the court date. Bail supports are an opportunity to address offending behaviour, especially among groups who struggle to meet bail conditions, such as women, people with addictions and young people. There is a big issue with young people not being given clear enough information about the consequences if they do not meet their bail conditions.

Good examples of bail supports include bail information schemes, bail support supervision schemes, remand fostering and bail hostels. In Scotland supervised bail has led to a reduction in offending behaviour because 80% of the people who completed the bail supervision period did not go on to receive a custodial sentence. The projects that take a view that the bail period is a time when offending behaviour can be addressed are much more successful in the long term. Let us remember that locking a person up costs money and is not cost neutral. We believe that moneys should instead be invested in services and supports that have been proved to be more effective at addressing crime.

I hope I have answered all of the questions posed by Deputy O'Brien.