I welcome our guests. I remind people of their privileges and that they cannot participate if they are outside of Leinster House, etc. Those giving evidence have to be physically present within the grounds of Leinster House and should not criticise or make charges against any person, or identify him or her by name or in such a way that makes him or her identifiable. I think we all understand that.

I propose that we publish the opening statements from our witnesses. Is that agreed? Agreed. I suggest that we invite our witnesses to speak for five or ten minutes and that we allow members to ask questions and make comments for approximately five minutes. Members may ask more questions after everybody gets an opportunity to speak.

The committee is looking at Travellers' experience of the justice system. Today we will focus on Travellers in prison. The committee has already visited Castlerea Prison, Mountjoy Female Prison - the Dóchas Centre - and Oberstown Children Detention Campus. Travellers represent less than 1% of the population yet we make up 8% of male prisoners, 16% of female prisoners and 21% of children detained. The committee looks forward to hearing from our witnesses about this very important subject. We would like to hear about the experience of Travellers dealing with the justice system, including prison, and how we can make things better.

We are grateful to our witnesses for coming here today. They include representatives of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, the Traveller Justice Initiative, the Traveller Mediation Service and Barnardos.

Our witnesses are all very welcome here today.

It is very important for us as a committee to examine the justice system and, most importantly, why there are so many Travellers in prison in this country and what supports we need for Travellers. I am sure we all know the answers but it is important we document those answers and that this committee has a responsibility to work with the Traveller community.

We will begin with one quote a young man said to me in 2020. It was his first time to be in court and he was very nervous. I said to him he will be okay and that everything will be fine. He said, "No Eileen, I am already guilty." I said no, he would not be and that was up to the judge. He said, "I am guilty on the basis of being a member of the Traveller community." I want us all to be mindful of that before we start.

I will open it up to our witnesses. I ask Ms Saoirse Brady to begin.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to come back to the situation in Kildare. I have a useful document that was compiled by a very good citizen journalist, Treasa Keegan. She made a freedom of information application and put together a document that gives us a profile of Kildare. Some 250,000 people live there. There was a good leak detection system before the water services ever transferred. It seems to have deteriorated, but there has been a lot of housing development, which would cause disruption. I understand that puts pressure on pipes and the like. The document looks at the profile of water services over the county, which has a big cohort of people. Some 46% of customer service tickets were for water outages. There are 120,000 customers with individual water service connections. What Uisce Éireann said in the response is that there were less than 13%, or 15,578, service requests in the last six and a half years. I would not have said it was less than 13%. I would have thought it was very high. There was a very stable water situation previously. It is very obvious that there are higher levels of disruption. Some businesses that are very water dependent, such as barbers and hairdressers, just have to close the door. If it is repeated, then it is very problematic.

The other point is that there seems to be an inconsistency in the deployment of water tankers. We made a request for water tankers when there were repeated outages. Over 20 days there might have been ten outages. It was astronomical. We were told that water tankers would not be deployed because the area was too large. I know that the shops ran out of bottled water. There is an inconsistency here. I ask Mr. Gleeson to go back and look at where there are problems.

The other thing is that we get complaints from people. This is similar to what the Chair has talked about. We hear from people who experience difficulty when they contact the call centre. Weekends, in particular, are a problem. Will the witnesses have a look at that? I can only go on what people are complaining to me about. Very often, we get an overview of things.

The majority of the outages were unplanned, which means bursts of water, and that is how we lose a lot of water. When a pipe bursts, a lot of water is lost before we can get to it. People are discommoded. The information I have is broken down to individual towns. The two towns that went backwards were Leixlip and Celbridge. There were slight improvements in Newbridge and Naas. Those are all big towns. This information is quite useful. A citizen journalist can do that work. I am sure that Irish Water maps things out but this information tells a story about a difficulty here. I said earlier that I was told categorically that an upgrade in the water has been prioritised but that was after a job was done in the same location. I have been told that categorically and I do not understand why those things do not align.

I will return to one other thing in respect of new connections and work orders. There were difficulties that were not properly captured at one point. That information is on page 75 of the Uisce Éireann statement on internal controls. There was an impact on reported revenue for 2023, which increased by just €10 million as a result. Was there a loss of income or was it an under-reporting? Is there an amendment to the accounts as a consequence? Does that mean that previous years' reports of revenue were incorrect? There was a difficulty with work orders and a number of connections.