Ms Una Doyle:

I will come in if that is okay. I thank Senator Ward for the endorsement of the work of the Probation Service. It is nice to hear.

Building on the response I gave the Senator's colleague earlier regarding victims of crime and the impact it has had on restorative justice here in Ireland, one of the things it has done is open up and broaden the debate on restorative justice. A debate and conversation that probably would have been in the realm of community sanctions within criminal justice has now actually opened up to a much wider discourse in terms of other stakeholders, including the community. That is really important.

Much work is going on in the background at the moment in terms of looking at how we might further develop our restorative justice services and interventions. When I say "we", I am not exclusively talking about the Probation Service. We are one organisation that would see restorative justice as an integral part of our work but there are other organisations too, such as our colleagues in the Garda Síochána, etc., and the direct provision some of the projects provide. That is also important.

I am not sure if people are familiar with a working group called Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change, RJS4C, which is looking at strategies in relation to the promotion, pushing out and development of restorative justice, and how we might approach things differently in that space. Again, I think potential developments are coming down the track in that regard.

From a probation perspective, we have developed our restorative justice and victim services unit. Although it is a small unit in headquarters, it has a key function in providing the leadership and connectivity around best practice in restorative justice interventions, which actually stems out nationwide to all our offices and in turn links in with the Judiciary. Obviously, different judges have different preferences in terms of options available to them. Certainly, however, much has been done around education and information sharing and working with the Judiciary around that. Yet, there is much more to be done. It is certainly a space that will grow. There are interventions from the perspectives of the various stakeholders, whether it is the offender, the victim or the community, that yield benefits for all and is cost-effective.

Without getting too much into anecdotes, something came up around people's perceptions of harm, etc. We had an experience where we held a restorative conference that featured a young man who had stolen a car from an elderly couple. In the process of the conference, the young man learned that the car was technically that couple's legs for going to their various appointments. He then began to empathise. He could see his grandmother in the lady who was there. Similarly, from the perspective of the couple whose car was stolen, it was really important that they heard that it was random. People who are victims of crime often worry that they are a target. They worry that they were deliberately focused on when the reality, while not excusing the behaviour, is that it could have been any car. They needed to hear that to know there was not some particular vendetta or targeting going on. Those are just some of the examples or flavours around the restorative justice interventions we can see yielding benefits for all concerned.