Mr. Mark Wilson:

I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk to the committee today about some of the important work we in the Probation Service do in the area of social inclusion and in addressing the critical challenges faced by the Traveller community engaged in our justice system today.

For those members who are less familiar with the work of the Probation Service, we are the lead organisation overseeing the assessment and management of offenders in the community. We have approximately 400 staff based in more than 50 prison and community settings nationwide. On any one day, the service is engaged with more than 9,000 people in the community and up to 2,000 prisoners in custody. Of those being supervised in the community, some 1,500 are serving post-release supervision orders. This equates to 50% of today's prison population.

I am pleased to speak alongside my colleagues who have spoken today. Effective and meaningful collaboration with these partners and others across the justice sector is critical to realising the Probation Service's vision of "creating safer and more inclusive communities" by enabling those referred to us to change their behaviour and make good on the harm they have caused.

Earlier this year, we published our new strategy statement, which outlines our key strategic targets for the next three years. The promotion of inclusion is firmly placed at the centre of our vision and our work. As a core pillar of our strategy, we are striving to become a more inclusive organisation by delivering fair and accessible services to all who come into contact with us. We also see it as our duty to identify and seek to remove barriers that may prevent reintegration, rehabilitation and access to life opportunities, enabling each of us to participate fully and positively in society. We incorporate working with the Traveller community as an integral element of this approach.

As a service, we have worked extensively with the Traveller community over many years, both through the work of probation officers and via our national network of 60 community organisations, to which we currently provide €16 million in funding, representing approximately one third of our budget. Many of these projects have a long history of providing services directly to Travellers and have been successful in tailoring their programmes and supports to this community. I hope to have an opportunity to speak further about some of these projects at a later point today.

In analysing our data, we are acutely aware there are a highly disproportionate number of Travellers under probation supervision today. As has been stated, while Travellers represent less than 1% of the total population of the State, they represent 11.3% of the Probation Service caseload. The over-representation here is stark and mirrors similar findings elsewhere within the justice system.

In 2014, following a report published by the Irish Penal Reform Trust, and as my colleague, Mr. Black, has mentioned, we partnered with the St. Stephen's Green Trust to establish the Travellers in Prison Initiative, TPI. This has been instrumental in helping us, as a national service, to address some of the key challenges and difficulties being experienced by Travellers under probation supervision. We have worked extensively with the TPI in the area of ethnic data collection to improve our data accuracy and consistency. Our aim is to be able to use these data more effectively to monitor outcomes and be able to propose evidence-based responses that will enhance our approach in working with people from the Traveller ethnicity. The TPI has been supporting our staff to approach ethnic identification in a culturally sensitive and appropriate manner. Our objective here is to ensure our service users feel at ease throughout this process and understand that data will remain confidential, only being used to enhance knowledge and improve services.

This year we also worked with the TPI to deliver a series of bespoke cultural awareness training sessions for probation officers and community service supervisors. This training encouraged staff to reflect on and examine their own attitudes and behaviours and challenged them to consider subconscious biases. The training placed a strong emphasis on user voice and proved highly insightful. Another area of recent development has been our work in evaluating how we, as a service, can adapt our pre-sentence assessment reports, which we prepare for the criminal courts, to better account for the Traveller experience.

As part of our strategy, we intend to publish guidelines that can be utilised by probation staff to ensure a more culturally sensitive approach to the preparation of such reports. In addition, the Probation Service and the Irish Prison Service continue to play a central role in supporting the Department of Justice's Working to Change: Social Enterprise and Employment Strategy 2021-23, which launched last November. The strategy sets out a collaborative approach for supporting employment options for people with convictions. It aims to remove the systemic barriers faced so people can make sustainable changes. It builds on the solid foundation of employment supports already in place.

I am pleased the TPI actively participated in the development of the strategy. Members of the Traveller community were identified as a key stakeholder group within the strategy and it is recognised that ongoing consultation, engagement and co-design is required if sustainable outcomes are to be achieved. As chair of the social enterprise steering group, I am pleased to note the very positive progress being achieved across many of the 46 actions in the strategy.

I am satisfied the Probation Service has made positive progress in recent years in working more effectively with the Traveller community. I recognise more work must be done and we must continue with that. In keeping with our strategic pillar of inclusion, additional upcoming priorities include the following items. Next month we will launch a new research report which examines the misuse of drugs and alcohol among people on probation supervision in Ireland. The research, developed by Dr. Louise Rooney, acknowledges an over-representation of Travellers within the Probation Service caseload and includes culturally relevant findings. Such findings will inform our work into the future. We remain committed to enhancing gender-informed practices by working with our partners across the justice sector. In this context, we will work on targeted responses and programmes that aim to enhance support for female Travellers in custody and in their return to the community. We also remain committed to ensuring the Traveller voice and user experience is central to the development and delivery of our services and training. In hearing those voices, we recognise the importance of listening. We will aim to provide a response that is informed and sensitive to the cultural context, norms and values that are intrinsic to the lives of the Traveller community. Finally, we look forward to expanding our collaboration with our partners, the TPI, the Irish Association for Social Inclusion Opportunities, IASIO, the St. Stephen's Green Trust, the Irish Prison Service, and other colleagues to ensure the voice of the Traveller community is represented, heard and understood within the criminal justice system.

I thank members once again for the opportunity to speak to them today. I look forward to taking questions later in the session.