Ms Fíona Ní Chinnéide:

At root, we do not believe that people with substance misuse issues should be criminalised in order to access treatment. That is a fundamental issue. The same applies to women in particular. There is a cohort of women for whom prison is a place of respite. There is no more damning indictment on society than the fact that anybody should think prison is the safest place to be. There is a huge issue beyond prison concerning the provision of safe, supported housing in the community that needs to be addressed. The same applies to children. There is documented overuse of remand for children in order to access mental health assessment in Oberstown, which is another issue. Approximately 50% of children in the detention school system are on remand at any one time. This compares with 15% of the adult population. Put simply, nobody should be criminalised to access treatments and services they need in the community, and that is a full stop.

The Deputy asked about the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use. We do not believe this would necessarily have a huge impact on the prison population. We know that CityWide and other groups that are better informed than we are in understanding the paths of desistance towards recovery of addictions have proposed this, so we stand by their proposal. If somebody has addiction issues, I do not think personal use will be the problem; the problem will be all the other crime that comes with an addiction, namely, shoplifting, burglary and other crimes. To that end, I could not agree with the Deputy more about spent convictions legislation and the need to acknowledge and respond to people who have demonstrated that they have moved away from their offending behaviour. We ask people to stop offending and we need to acknowledge when they stop and reduce any barriers they might continue to face through having a criminal record, such as in accessing jobs, training, education, travel and even home or car insurance. The Irish Penal Reform Trust has campaigned on this issue since at least 2008. It is a huge issue.

The Criminal Justice (Spent Convictions and Certain Disclosures) Act was finally introduced in January 2016, signed into law in February and commenced in April. We find it extremely disappointingly limited. We acknowledge that it will be of benefit to many people but it is extremely limited in its application and we believe it fails to support rehabilitation of people with more serious offending. As it stands, there is no limit to the number of minor motoring offences and public order offences that can become spent, but only one other conviction can become spent. If one has two or more other convictions, neither can become spent. It is a huge issue. The current position does not take into account in any way the circumstances that may have contributed to a person's offending behaviour at the time, which could have been youth, addictions, poverty or any range of other circumstances. It presumes that one contact with the criminal justice system is enough for people to escape all these circumstances of disadvantage and marginalisation, which we know is not the case. We also know that people grow up, move away from crime and move on. We hear from people so often who are now in their late 20s, have got married and have kids. They want to move to Australia and they have moved away from the impulsive, low-self-regulated immature behaviour they engaged in when they were 18, 19 or 20 but these convictions pursue them 20, 30 or 40 years after the fact. If one has two separate convictions for shoplifting, for example, from 20 years ago, they are still on one's record indefinitely. We would strongly welcome a review of, and more attention being paid to, this issue. We have generous provision for offences committed by people when they are aged 18 or younger, and there is a proposal, reported in the newspapers last week, that these provisions could be extended up to the age of 24 at a minimum. We would strongly recommend this as a first point, but the overall point is whether we are giving people second chances. Are we acknowledging that they have moved away from their offending behaviour? No one is suggesting that convictions be removed from one's criminal record overnight. One demonstrates that one has moved on, and then society needs to acknowledge people's efforts.