Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the speakers for the presentations. I apologise that I could not be here for the presentations but I have read the information. This is my first meeting as a member of the committee so I am only getting used to the work. I would say to Mr. Walsh that my daughter worked in Pathways on a job placement for a summer a few years ago, and she found it very worthwhile. It is an excellent organisation and I congratulate Mr. Walsh on the work he does.

The question I want to ask has largely been answered in the last contribution. Much of the issue around spent convictions is how society deals with them, rather than how the individuals deal with them. It has always been put on the individual to make the changes when the bigger onus is on society. It is useful that this debate has been taking place in the last couple of years. I was positively disposed towards the last spent convictions Bill when it first appeared because a couple of people in Donegal had contacted me about convictions from 30 years ago which they still had to disclose. I thought that Bill would go some way towards meeting the issue but the single-offence concept scuppered that straightaway. It raised people's expectations and then dashed them again when they actually saw it was not helping them.

It is probably part of an evolution for us, as a society, rather than for the people with the convictions, who are probably more in tune with what is needed. Although this is probably a rhetorical question, how much of this is about the rest of society getting used to the idea rather than spent convictions?