Results 981-1,000 of 3,777 for speaker:Marc Ó Cathasaigh
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: As I said, I am going to turn to another issue where resources come into play. I am addressing a letter from Ms McCaffrey to the Chairperson of the joint Oireachtas committee on education. As she knows, we visited Mountjoy. She pointed to some of the increased investment that has been made in the educational budget. It is difficult to pick out the educational budget. I can see the...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I know, and I am going to ask a question about recidivism and where we sit internationally. I would like to be given a ball-park understanding of the closures. I will take the Mountjoy example because that is where the committee visited. In an average month how many days is the library closed when we would like it to be open or for how many days is the school closed when we would like it...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Another issue I wish to flag, which was raised within the committee's report, is there is no access to educational psychologists for inmates if they have a learning difficulty. In a lot of cases an unidentified learning difficulty distances somebody from their education system. If they become distanced from their education system their likelihood of ending up in prison is far higher. It is...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: The ten minutes always seems like it is going to be long and then when you are in it is incredibly short, but I will move to another issue. There was inspection report oversight monitoring visit during the Covid-19 pandemic at the Dóchas Centre, which was published in August 2020. A significant section of that report is redacted. Ms McCaffrey may correct me if I am wrong on this, but...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: They are not outstanding though. They are-----
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Okay, I thank Ms McPhillips for that. I want to talk through a specific issue my office has been dealing with. We have been banging our heads against the wall for a long time. It might be a niche issue, but if we addressed it we could get a good result for people in a short space of time. It is around qualified bus drivers coming in from South Africa. There are people who are English...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Their documentation has already been cleared in order to get the work permit in the first place. That is the penultimate step, because then the National Driver Licence Service requires a PPS number, proof of PPS, proof of address and all these things. That takes a further 20 days. There are bits in this process that are adding on time, like the two to three weeks waiting around for an...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Very good.
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I know the Department of Transport also has a role to play in this.
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: The times have improved in Dublin, but outside Dublin they have slipped. They were four to five weeks and now they are out to two or three months.
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I raised bus drivers because I have been dealing with the issue quite a bit-----
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: -----but I am sure it applies across the board for people who are arriving for work permits.
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Has Ms McPhillips any sense of a timeline whereby that process might be dealt with and the public gets to see the reports they paid for?
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I will pick up where we left off. I wanted to ask earlier about recidivism rates. To have any prisoner find himself back in prison is a failure in terms of how we are setting up our Prison Service, or perhaps not our Prison Service but all of society. There are a number of reasons to choose to incarcerate somebody, such as punishment or the safety of wider society, but we need to have a...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: We are at 81% and they are such young lives. The more resources we put into that, the better. It can be approached from whatever perspective. It is fantastic value for money to use a very simplistic metric, but it is possible to make a significant impact on a life. There is another issue I want to raise.
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I want to raise a specific issue. This committee heard private testimony from a whistleblower in the Prison Service in late 2018 and officials from the Prison Service appeared before the Committee on Public Accounts in early 2019 - it was before I was a member of the committee - to answer the issues raised. The Department of Justice then commissioned an investigative report in October 2019...
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: That is why I asked a generalised question.
- Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 24 - Justice
Vote 21 - Prisons (15 Feb 2024) Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I have a final succinct question about the naturalisation process for minors. It is taking ages. Adults are getting through the naturalisation process and it is taking longer for some of their children.
- Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (15 Feb 2024)
Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I am conscious I miss a number of these afternoon meetings but the Office of Public Works, OPW, was listed on the work programme at one stage and has slipped off it. Would the Chair be able to tell me what-----
- Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (15 Feb 2024)
Marc Ó Cathasaigh: There are a number of issues but I will come back to the committee on those.