Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. Will he agree there are far too few JLOs? I came across a parliamentary question from 1985 tabled by Deputy Alan Shatter to the then Minister for Justice, Deputy Michael Noonan. In his reply the then Minister stated there were 79 JLOs and that in 1982 they dealt with 4,743 offenders. We now have only 30 more JLOs but their workload is three times more than what it was in the 1980s. There are far too few JLOs, with probably only one in every county. We need more JLOs given the amount of offenders we have.

Where stands the proposal to introduce a third level qualification for JLOs? The need to establish such a qualification was identified in 2004.

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