Mr. Drew Harris:

Good morning, Chairman and members of the committee. Last month I provided a detailed briefing to the Policing Authority in public on the various problems we discovered with the youth referral system. I do not wish to repeat myself or to take up the committee’s time unnecessarily, but it is important that I place on the record of the Houses of the Oireachtas and with this committee the key points from that briefing.

At the outset, on behalf of An Garda Síochána, I repeat that I apologise to the more than 3,000 individual and corporate victims we have let down. They expected us to pursue the crimes committed against them to the fullest extent possible and in their cases we did not do this. Each and every one of these crimes should have been investigated. The public expects that if something is reported to An Garda Síochána, it will be investigated. I expect the same.

We also let society down by not fully pursuing these crimes, some of them serious, committed by young people. I also apologise to those young people whom we also we let down. A great majority of these in the main were vulnerable children who had committed crimes in the past and would commit further crimes. We should have done better by them at the time.

Before I get into the detail of the problem, it is important to say that while our examination has found serious issues with how some crimes committed by young people were processed and dealt with by An Garda Síochána, this should not take away from the significant and important work that has been done and is still being done by the Garda youth diversion programme. It both prevents crime and protects communities, and has steered thousands of young people and children away from crime and anti-social behaviour. Almost two thirds of the children receiving an informal or formal caution as their first caution under the diversion scheme do not reoffend. This has been a major benefit to the individuals, their families and society at large.

Rather than going through the remainder of the opening statement, I would like to refer to the slides and provide an explanation of them. In An Garda Síochána we had an examination team in place. It was headed by Mr. Paul Cleary, who is with us. It examined the period from July 2010 to July 2017. In that time-----