Ms Margaret Tumelty:

We did a lot of that over the past two years and it was a great learning experience for us. In doing the Covid reports over the past two years, we met more than 50 different organisations, which ranged from family resource centres to those representing different minority groups. We met sex workers and commercial entities. We also maintained the relationship, so it was not a one-off talk. We met them a number of times and, by talking to them, we built up relationships and trust. In some cases, for example, we would have had two or three communities where groups of people said they wanted to bring more to the meeting. A number of our board members sat in on those meetings on a few occasions as well.

These are listening exercises. We are not trying to present them as mad scientific things. They are the particular, so we are not trying to make generalisations, but they are still very valid as the particular. If an inner city group tells us what is happening for them, we bring that back. It helps us to have a more informed conversation with Garda management but also to feed back to them and say that while they are saying it is one thing, this is what we heard in this area. There was a good geographic spread. We did not explicitly state at those meetings or within the Covid reports that it was a group from a specific place, so I think that gave people confidence as well. We would have said we met a group representing Travellers, students or migrants, an inner city group, an urban group or a group representing young offenders in a particular area.