Ms Ita Burke:

To follow on in the addiction area, we are involved with funded projects in helping women recover form addiction. It is the peer support, lived experience model in respect of which we have trained some of our staff in the reduce the use and recover me programme. It is focused on people dealing with recovery from addiction and relapse prevention. It is a very innovative programme and it is working extremely well. Women are training other women and workers in the homeless field and the criminal justice field around recovery. It is a particularly good programme and one we encourage and want to continue.

In terms of restorative justice, Deputy Clare Daly will be aware, the Probation Service funds two dedicated restorative justice projects, which cover the Dublin area and the midlands, and the Cork area. The Deputy inquired about figures. During the past two years both of those projects would have catered for up to 400 offenders. Apart from those dedicated projects, all our probation officer staff would be trained in restorative work. We have worked with judges throughout the country and judges can look for restorative interventions as part of their pre-sanction assessment. We are involved in that work. It could range form a letter of apology to some reparative work such as painting and getting involved in a local community. The other area in which we are involved is victim offender mediation, where a mediator would work with an offender and a victim, and it would all be about repairing the harm. It must be voluntary. We have found from our work with victims over the years that what they want most is for the offender to stop offending, and that would be very much to the fore in our work in the restorative justice area.