Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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125. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of housing units operated by the Probation Service in each respective local authority area, in tabular form; and the relevant services provided to the residents of these units. [17875/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Probation Service is the lead agency in the supervision and assessment of offenders in the community. To assist and enable it in this work my Department provides funding to voluntary and community organisations for the provision of support services to offenders through the transition from prison and an offending background into the community, and to break the cycle of offending.

The Probation Service is a statutory member of the nine Regional Homeless Consultative Fora and works within this structure to ensure the needs of homeless Probation Service clients are addressed. However, the Service does not operate any housing units itself.

Some of these organisations funded by the Probation Service have as part of their suite of services the provision of accommodation units which can be availed of by the offenders referred to them for assistance by the Probation Service. The following Community Based Organisations (CBO's) provide residential placement to offenders among their services: PACE, TRAIL, and Tus Nua. Other CBO's provide residential services as part of their addiction programmes: these include Coolmine, Ceim Eile and Fellowship House. Residential services to young persons are provided by Matt Talbot Adolescent Services and Aislinn which are organisations also funded by the Probation Service.