Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses. There is a significant range of knowledge and experience in front of us and the time available does not really do justice in trying to learn from that knowledge and experience.

I wish first to focus on two areas. When Ms Keaveney talked about probation issues, she mentioned restorative justice and restorative practices. Will she give us more information about what has been done in that area and what has worked well that we are currently doing? Has the State ever invested properly in restorative practices? The idea of restorative justice has been talked about a lot, but it is never really something that gets the money needed for it actually to work. I would expand that question to the other services here. From their experience, have we meaningfully tried restorative practices? What can we do to improve that?

Policing is one part of the solution, but it is also one part of the problem, particularly as regards kids on the street who have entrenched views of the Garda that are not very positive and entrenched views within the Garda of the same kids that are also not very positive. Both groups will happily call each other "scumbags". Essentially, there is an othering and an "us and them" mindset. Policing can be part of the problem as well. I would love to hear some of the experiences of Mr. Ó Donnchú in working with the police in trying to undermine that othering and "us and them" mindset, or in new forms of policing. Community policing gets talked about a lot and has had some success. Part of this is about the learnings the committee can take into the policing, security and community safety Bill.