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.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I will move on to the issue of local representation. I served on a county council, as have some of the members who are present. I think Deputy Murphy and I served on county councils when water services were under the remit of local authorities. It was fairly satisfactory because if there was a local problem, it would go to a local engineer and the problem would be identified and resolved very quickly. I have to tell you that this has been enormously frustrating for local councillors and TDs. I will outline two experiences for the representatives. Four Christmases ago, sewerage wastewater backed up in the system on the Mountmellick road in Portlaoise. It was actually coming from the bathroom in a person's house. This was directly after Christmas. A local councillor contacted Irish Water and made a number of attempts to get somebody. A truck arrived after a period. It was one of those trucks that clears out the line. It spent two days working on it but was not able to fix it. The local councillor spoke to a member of staff of Laois County Council who had been a general operative in water services for years. He said he knew what the problem was,but the council could not go near it because it did not have a job order from Irish Water. That contractor failed anyway, but at that stage three days had gone by. A second contractor arrived on the fourth day and the same thing happened. It spent the day at it but was not able to identify or clear the problem. That was day four. It was then five days into the problem and a local contractor who had bid for work with Irish Water, with Laois County Council, arrived with one member of staff who was probably still under the remit of Laois County Council at the time and, within one hour, the problem was identified and solved. In the meantime, that councillor had spent a lot of time and experienced a lot of frustration trying to sort this out. The householders had to endure sewage from other houses in their houses. That was not too nice, I can tell you. The management of Laois County Council had to get involved in it, and it was able to resolve it. The point I am making and the reason I am telling this story is that a local engineer or general operative - the man with the truck who bid for work with Irish Water - arrived on day three. It is my understanding that Irish Water worked down through a pecking order. That is what we discovered at this point because I had some involvement in this as well. He identified it within a matter of minutes and within an hour or so the problem was solved and the system was flowing again.

I can give another example. On Church Street in Portlaoise, there are two buildings standing side by side. There is a meter on one building that works and there is a meter sitting outside the other. We will call these buildings “A” and “B”. There is a meter outside building A that does turn. There is a meter outside building B that does not turn. Building A, despite only one member of staff being in it, appeared to have very high water usage. The suspicion was that building A might have been supplying more than just itself. The bills started arriving from Irish Water, and they were very substantial. Eventually, it was arranged for the local water keeper - the man in the van - to arrive to check it. The suggestion was to get the people in buildings A and B to turn off all the taps and not to flush toilets or do anything else, and then get the people in building B to turn on a few taps. That is a substantial building, with more people working in it. Then, presto, the meter at building A started turning at a rate of knots. They turned it off, and it showed that building A was supplying building B. That is okay. It is an inherited problem and I understand that. It came from the old system and I understand that Uisce Éireann is trying to sort out meters in every building, but there is a large number of these. Bills are still arriving, however. In fact, there was contact from the lead of the Uisce Éireann billing team. I think that was on Tuesday but I have not had time to talk to them about it. The point is that a year has gone by and there is a high stack of paperwork because we are keeping records of everything that has gone on and it still has not been resolved. It is now clear and has at last been accepted that building A is supplying building B. This is down to the lack of connection at local level with human beings. It is as simple of that. There should be somebody in each county, such as an engineer, who can examine these things and sort them out. There should be one administrator, one engineer with a secretary. I think the public representatives who are present may have a different take on this or they may be on the same page as me on this. This would identify these problems quickly and get them sorted.

This is enormously frustrating. The amount of time my office has spent on this is enormous, as is the amount of time that has been spent on this by local authority staff and the number of people in call centres to whom we have spoken. We have spoken to reams of staff at this stage. We are exhausted by it. The point is that this is a simple problem that was very easily identified. The local water keeper, the people next door and I identified it within ten minutes. Does Mr. Gleeson understand my frustration at that?