Results 1-20 of 72 for speaker:Mal O'Hara

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Irish Travellers’ Access to Justice Report: Discussion (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I have another question. My accent is obviously northern. For 26 years since the making of the Good Friday Agreement, we have had a section 75 duty in the North. There are two elements, the first being about promoting good relations among specific groups and the second being about equality of opportunity. To achieve these aims, we need data. We have the aims embedded in our international...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Irish Travellers’ Access to Justice Report: Discussion (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I am thinking about UK examples such as those in the Stephen Lawrence report, and also about institutional sexism within the Metropolitan Police and such challenges. I take the point on recognition. I pay tribute to the witnesses. Having engaged with one in 60 Traveller adults in the State adds to the authenticity and voice of the report. The findings really reflect community...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Irish Travellers’ Access to Justice Report: Discussion (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I want to ask about confidence in the justice system for outcomes when Travellers are victims of crime. I know it is a wider point. As a caveat, in the North we have hate crime legislation and we have Judge Marrinan's review, which I hope we will update. Our outcome rates for hate crime reporting languish in the low teens. There is a lack of confidence in minority communities about...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Irish Travellers’ Access to Justice Report: Discussion (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I will make a couple of comments. I thank the witnesses very much for the presentation. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Drugs Use. I have a bad clash of meetings on Thursday mornings. Last week, I attended meetings of this committee and the committee on drugs use and heard about addiction, poverty, housing, inequality, systemic racism and discrimination and how...

Committee on Drugs Use: A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: My apologies. The Traveller committee is reliant on me to be quorate at 10.30 a.m., so I thank the Chair and other members for allowing me to jump up the speaking list. I will go straight into my three primary questions. As I have said at nearly every committee meeting, 218 people died of drugs in 2020 in Northern Ireland where I am from and 213 died in 2021. The UK’s overall...

Committee on Drugs Use: A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: Is that the consensus across the panel?

Committee on Drugs Use: A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed) (3 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: The story of Davina sat with me. I have known Davinas. I grew up with Davinas. I was born at an interface in working class north Belfast, so I know exactly what was meant. I wish to discuss the tension between specialist and mainstream services. My background is in community health and well-being, particularly in the LGBT sector. There was an argument we always had about how we needed...

Seanad: Budget 2025 (Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform): Statements (1 Oct 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I will make this shorter, then. This is a somewhat surreal experience for me. For over ten years, I have been party-political, and that period has seen a polity in the North in which we have faced significant challenges. Therefore, it is welcome to see a budget that is very progressive. I would push back on some of the earlier commentary to the effect that it does little to help the most...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Travellers in Prison: Discussion (26 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I have a couple of questions and then maybe a proposal, but first I just want to thank Ms Sweeney for sharing her personal testimony on the advocacy of that project and the supports. That was really powerful, as was everything else that was said. I want to ask about the Traveller Mediation Service. I have a Nordie accent, so I want to ask about that support in the North. Will the...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Travellers in Prison: Discussion (26 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I thank Mr. McDonagh for that. Has there been engagement with the Executive or the local council? Is it just the PSNI?

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Travellers in Prison: Discussion (26 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: A strategic failure in the North has been the loss of An Munia Tober, an umbrella Traveller-led organisation that advocated on behalf of Travellers in the context of their needs. With regard to standards and training, Ms Brady and Ms Costello talked about going in and delivering one-off sessions. It is something but it is not systemic and does not address prejudice and racism. Do the...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Travellers in Prison: Discussion (26 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I thank the witnesses. I also work in youth work in building strong communities and looking at poverty and inequality and all of those systemic issues that we need to address. Can I make a proposal? I appreciate that the committee will be writing a couple of letters requesting additional funding. The Traveller Justice Initiative and the Irish Penal Reform Trust will be writing jointly to...

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I thank the witnesses for coming in. With their indulgence, my first round of questions will be for the IPU and in my second round I will come to the ICGP. My first question is on international engagement and the discussions with the Portuguese pharmacy union. Did it historically support decriminalisation in its widest context? Does it still have the same position? What has the IPU...

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: From the inception, how robust was the provision of needle exchange services and OST in Portugal?

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I want to pick at that point a little bit. I get the sense we are saying that we should not let perfect be the enemy of the good. Decriminalisation in itself is already a concrete step but for additional success in that regard and to save lives, which is ultimately what we want to do, we need to put all those additional supports in place and we need significant infrastructure investment in...

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: It was mentioned that only 100 out of 1,800 pharmacies are providing needle exchange services. Will the witnesses give clarity on the OST? Are the 100 pharmacies situated in deprived areas? Is there a blanket approach? What is the approach in terms of those provisions and the community engagement? From my experience working in Belfast, we wanted to put a needle exchange into a community...

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I am a Belfast boy and I want to raise something in relation to the submission from the Irish College of General Practitioners. In Northern Ireland we had 218 deaths in 2020 and 213 in 2021. The ONS would say that is 11.5 per 100,000. Scaled up that is 115 per million, which is higher than the rate here in Ireland. The challenge of that is when we look at the European statistics we take...

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: Regarding my second question, Dr. Crowley touched on a more holistic model around primary care. We spoke about some of the significant gaps. I think they came up again in respect of mental health provision. What does that look like in an ideal world?

Committee on Drugs Use: Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion (Resumed) (19 Sep 2024)

Mal O'Hara: In his piece, Dr. Kenny said that 350 GPs completed specialist training and the challenge relating to that. How much more additional resources are required in terms of that provision for GPs?

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation (Resumed): Department of House, Local Government and Heritage (11 Jul 2024)

Mal O'Hara: I thank the Minister of State for coming to talk to us. The ethnic identifier was introduced in March 2022. What is the Minister of State's sense and that of the Department of how robust that is? Without clear, concise data, we cannot get a true picture of need. There has been significant progress on introducing that, but how robustly is the ethnic identifier being implemented and what...