Ms Fíona Ní Chinnéide:

I will speak about the courts. One important thing is to stop talking about victims and offenders as if they are two separate tribes. As Senator Ruane alluded to, often they are the same people. Males in the 18 to 24 years of age group are the most likely to offend but they are also by far the most likely to be victims of crime. Ironically, they are also the least likely to worry about it, but they are twice as likely to be victims of an offence than someone who is aged over 65 years.

There is no research that we are aware of in respect of courts statistics. The Courts Service published its 2018 report some days ago. It is difficult to drill down into the information. We know from the annual recorded crime statistics that there are in the region of 200,000 recorded crimes every year. In 2017 in the District Court some 290,000 orders were made. Not all of those involved a criminal conviction. These related to 237,000 people before the courts. A total of 143,000 of those before the courts were there for road traffic offences. We believe that this is why the decision was taken to make minor motoring offences and public order offences unlimited. We believe the approach was taken that this would apply to the greatest number of people. Again, that is not linked to the main concern, which is protecting public safety. We would welcome some detailed research such as that published by the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom and the Scottish Government analysis. We would welcome for that to be conducted in Ireland.