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.

Mr. Chris McCarthy:

The particular issue here was a control weakness on our side whereby our field engineers completed work on site but did not sign it off. There are two elements to this and I will come to both of them. The engineers did not sign off the work on our system to enable us to show that the performance obligation was complete and we could recognise the revenue. There was €9.9 million there. We do not know whether that related to 2023 or a period prior to that year. However, based on materiality, we have met and discussed the issue with the Comptroller and Auditor General and our external auditors, Deloitte. We have agreed it was not a material number to restate the previous year's accounts. It was below our materiality remit. Since then, we have sought to enhance our controls to ensure this does not happen again. We have worked on that. Last week, we had an audit and risk committee, ARC, meeting and reported the progression with regard to the management letter points we have received from both the Comptroller and Auditor General and Deloitte to ensure we can close them out.

How it all came about was that when our contractors were going out to site, we discovered that some work was being completed by others. The performance obligation was not complete and we still had to go out and inspect. That was what Mr. Gleeson referred to. We had to go out and inspect the work to ensure it was done to our standards and specifications and met our performance obligation. At that stage, we recognised the revenue. The pertinent issue is our internal control issue and we have worked on improving that. The other issue is one we do not like. Nobody should be tampering or interfering with our network. We are very conscious of that. We have written to all developers that have a new connection agreement with us to ensure that does not happen again.