COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS debate -
Thursday, 1 Jul 2004

Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on Probation and Welfare Service.

Mr. T. Dalton (Secretary General, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform) called and examined.

Chairman

All of the witnesses are welcome. We are dealing with the Comptroller and Auditor General's report — report No. 46 — on the probation and welfare service.

Witnesses should be aware that they do not enjoy absolute privilege and should be apprised as follows. Their attention is drawn to the fact that, as and from 2 August 1998, section 10 of the Committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Compellability, Privileges and Immunities of Witnesses) Act 1997 grants certain rights to persons identified in the course of the committee's proceedings. These rights include the right to give evidence; the right to produce or send documents to the committee; the right to appear before the committee, either in person or through a representative; the right to make a written and oral submission; the right to request the committee to direct the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents, and the right to cross-examine witnesses. For the most part, these rights may be exercised only with the consent of the committee. Persons invited to appear before the committee are made aware of these rights, and any person identified in the course of proceedings who is not present may have to be made aware of them and provided with a transcript of the relevant part of the committee proceedings if the committee considers it appropriate in the interests of justice.

Notwithstanding this provision in the legislation, I remind members of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House, or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Members are also reminded of the provisions of Standing Order 156 that the committee should refrain from inquiring into the merits of a policy or policies of the Government, or a Minister of the Government, or the merits of the objectives of such policy or policies.

Will Mr. Dalton, please, introduce his officials?

Mr. Tim Dalton

I am accompanied by Ms Ann O'Gorman, principal officer, who deals with the probation and welfare service in the Department; Mr. Seán Lowry, principal probation and welfare officer, and Mr. Noel Waters, assistant secretary, who has responsibility for finance matters in the Department.

Mr. Cormac Carey

I am assigned to the public expenditure division of the Department of Finance. I am accompanied by my colleague, Mr. Pat Smyth.

Chairman

Will the Comptroller and Auditor General, introduce the report?

Mr. John Purcell

The probation and welfare service forms part of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Even allowing for inflation, there has been a considerable increase in the funding of the service since 1995, rising from €13 million to €40 million in 2003, which represents significant annual expenditure. The service has a staff of approximately 340, working mainly in community-based teams or prisons. It also employs contract staff to oversee community service work and funds a large number of schemes and programmes under which education, accommodation, treatment and counselling services are provided for offenders under supervision in the community.

The report set out to establish the extent to which the service, particularly the professional staff, had met the demands for its outputs, the efficiency of its operations and how it evaluated its effectiveness. It builds on earlier work done by an expert group which reviewed the service and finalised its conclusions in 1999. The recommendations of that group are set out in appendix A to the report, together with implementation status at the date of my report.

The quantum of demand for probation and welfare services is largely dictated by the courts, mainly in responding to requests for reports on offenders and supervising offenders subject to court-imposed community based sanctions. Demand has increased since 1995, particularly as a result of judges using the option of deferring custodial sentences pending a period of supervision. This increase was partly offset by a relative decline in use by judges of community service orders in the same period. The net additional demand, which was not matched by extra staff until about 2001, meant that the practical measure of limiting the case-load of community based teams of probation and welfare officers had to be taken. As a result, the number of requests and referrals to the service dropped slightly in 2000 and 2001. The indications are, however, that the trend has been reversed, probably reflecting increased staffing levels. That said, the service is still struggling to fulfil its normal mandate and meet new demand created, for example, by the use of post-release supervision orders for sex offenders. A by-product of this mountain of work has been the service's inability to discharge its statutory functions in the family law area because of the demands of the criminal justice system.

The report suggests areas where there may be scope for improving the efficiency of the service, for example, by analysing significant case-load variations between community-based teams with a view to optimising the deployment of staff or by looking at options to reduce the time spent by professional staff attending court hearings. The report states that currently this absorbs an estimated 13% of available professional line staff time.

Generally, our use of community based sanctions has remained low, relative to the use of custodial sanctions, despite its increase having been recommended by the expert group. In this context, it is important that judges do not feel constrained from using the option of community-based sanctions where it is appropriate to do so because of perceived capacity problems in the probation and welfare service. Apart from human and societal considerations, community-based sanctions are cheaper to implement than custodial sentences. We estimate that the cost of community service orders is approximately one third of that of implementing the custodial sentences that might otherwise be imposed. The service also has a presence in prisons and other places of detention to assist in the rehabilitation of offenders in custody but the absence of a formal tracking system hinders meaningful evaluation of this aspect of its work.

Generally, it is difficult to answer the question of how effective the service is in the absence of information which would support the assessment of the impact of its work. IT development has been slow, with consequential implications for efficiency and, more importantly, evaluation of the service's perfomance. This, allied to the dearth of research into the nature and incidence of reoffending and the relative effectiveness of custodial sentences and community-based sanctions, means there is no solid base to assess if the work being done by the service is having the desired effect.

Mr. Dalton

The Comptroller and Auditor General's report is comprehensive and the Department welcomes its publication. In so far as the management of offenders is concerned, the Department has two broad priorities, the first of which is to improve the conditions in which prisoners are held by replacing outdated accommodation. The second is to focus much more than heretofore on rehabilitation and community-based sanctions, which have the potential in the right circumstances to be more effective and less costly than imprisonment. The effective functioning of the probation and welfare service is vital to this latter priority.

The probation and welfare service has been in existence since the early 1960s, when its establishment was recommended by an interdepartmental committee set up to examine the issue of vandalism. The service was initially confined to the Dublin metropolitan courts and the prisons, expanded following a departmental review in 1969 and restructured to its present form following a further review in 1979.

Two criticisms could be made in relation to custody alternatives to imprisonment, the first of which is that the value and importance of alternatives have tended to be undervalued and underplayed during the years. One consequence of this is that the allocation of scarce resources has, historically, tended to favour significantly the use of custodial sanctions over less expensive and what could well be more cost-effective non-custodial options in the long run. The primary reason for their being undervalued is that when concerns are raised about rising crime levels, the response which the general public expects and the response it usually gets is an expansion of custodial capacity, despite the fact that non-custodial options cost only a small fraction of what it costs to keep offenders in prison. There is recognition at a theoretical level and the level of principle of the value of non-custodial options. The fact is, however, that the public generally tends to regard non-custodial options as soft and when headlines about rising crime levels abound, it tends to see imprisonment as the only right way to deal with offenders.

It would be a nonsense to pretend that all prisoners could be dealt with by means of non-custodial sanctions. Equally, however, most people dealing with offenders recognise that there is considerable scope for greater use of custody alternatives as sentencing options. While clearly there would be resource implications, whether by way of redistribution between the probation and welfare service and the prison service or the injection of additional resources, the net outcome would be that it should be possible to keep at least some of those now serving custodial sentences out of prison and undergoing appropriate rehabilitative or restorative sanctions under supervision in the community.

The second criticism that can be made — this comes through in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report — is that there is a lack of clarity about the purpose of the service and how it should best be used. There is also an insufficiency of information on which to measure its performance. The basic purpose of the service is to supervise offenders in a community setting who but for the service would likely be in custody. Under statute, the service has a supervisory role in the implementation of probation and other supervision orders as well as community service orders made by the courts and is involved in the funding of a large number of projects for offenders such as workshops, day centres, accommodation centres and so on.

Over the years, mainly because of the widely recognised high quality of the services offered by probation and welfare officers, the service has been drawn into other areas of work, for example, the provision of support services for prisoners. Under the Family Law Act 1995, it was drawn away from the task of supporting and supervising offenders, in a completely new direction, that is, the provision of reports for the courts in family law cases. In fact, it has not been able to discharge this function due to lack of resources. Under more recent legislation, it has been drawn into further areas, examples being the implementation and supervision of various orders provided for in the Children Act 2001 and the Sex Offenders Act 2001.

The main duties in which the service is engaged can be summarised as follows: preparing reports for the courts in criminal cases; supervising offenders placed on probation or similar community-based orders by the courts or supervised temporary release from prison; implementing the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act 1983; assisting offenders in custody; and developing and funding projects in local communities to buttress and support the process of court ordered supervision.

The committee will be aware that an expert group was established in the late 1990s to look at the service and make recommendations on its future development. Its reports were considered by the Government, which decided in 2001 to defer any decision pending receipt of the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the value for money examination of the service — the report before the committee today.

One of the central recommendations of the expert group was that the service should be set up as a stand-alone agency on a statutory basis. While no decision has been made on this as yet, because consideration of the expert group report has been deferred pending the outcome of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, it is fair to say views are divided as to whether the right course would be to set up a stand-alone agency having regard, in particular, to what has been happening elsewhere in Europe where the trend is towards single offender management agencies, referred to generally in the United States as correction services, which deal with all offenders, whether in custody serving sentences or under supervision in the community. The basic idea is that responsibility for the management of offenders, whether they are minor or serious offenders or at pre-custodial or post-custodial stage, should rest with a single body.

On clarifying the role of the service and the question of generating more statistical information as an aid to research and performance evaluation, there are a number of developments which are relevant, first and most important of which is that there is a major project under way to computerise the operations of the service, with the development of a modern case tracking system, both of which will be rolled out by the end of the year. These developments should fill the information gaps identified by the Comptroller and Auditor General and enable a better evaluation of performance to be made.

Other significant developments include the drawing up of a service level agreement between the service and the Prison Service. As matters stand, the service to prisoners is substantially under-resourced. Steps are also being taken to develop a service level agreement with the Courts Service. Discussions are taking place with other agencies to provide relevant information for the probation and welfare service at an earlier stage in order that appropriate services can be provided for prisoners much earlier than is now possible.

Implementation of the positive sentence management system by the Prison Service across all penal institutions is under way. This will be critical to the successful implementation of planned assessments and appropriate service delivery for prisoners. Research is under way in UCD to establish more information on Irish recidivism rates while a partnership group has been established in the service to set down terms for agreed case-load measurements which will go a considerable way towards addressing criticisms in the VFM report in relation to improved management of service outputs. In other words, the issues raised in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report are being addressed on several fronts.

To pull all of this work together and formulate a set of recommendations to the Government on the way forward, a working group has recently been established within the Department involving representatives of the Department and the service to draw up proposals on how we should proceed in the light of the VFM report and developments which have taken place since the reports of the expert group were issued. Our hope is that by drawing the various strands together we will soon be in a position to make recommendations to the Government about structural and other issues which will be based on better information and statistical data which are not available as matters stand. No matter which way one goes about it, given the increased responsibilities of the service, all of which are understandable and perfectly valid, it will be necessary to provide more resources for it if we are to close the gap to distinguish between demand and supply and generally improve the quality of service we provide for the courts, prisons, the general public and offenders.

Chairman

In 1999 the expert group made certain recommendations that the service be placed on a statutory basis. Why has it taken so long to do this?

Mr. Dalton

As I stated, the report was put on ice until the value for money report was received. Given that the pressures on the service present the real problem, I do not think it would make any difference whether it was on a statutory or non-statutory basis. Obviously, it would be preferable if it was placed on a statutory basis as recommended.

The core problem is that the service is under-resourced. Judges who might be disposed to imposing non-custodial sanctions in certain cases are not sure whether there will be delivery of a service should they do so. If a judge is sure there will be effective supervision by the service of a convicted criminal who poses a marginal risk in the community, he or she will be comfortable in making the order. However, if the judge is in a position where the probation and welfare officer says he or she has 25 more cases than he or she can handle, the tendency is to lean towards the option of imprisonment in the interests of the community. This is one of the issues which must be dealt with in addressing the problem as a whole.

Chairman

While we fully recognise the Comptroller and Auditor General's report is outstanding, the fact is that the expert group made its recommendation in 1999. The fact that consideration of its report was deferred until the Comptroller and Auditor General made his report is not really an excuse.

Mr. Dalton

While provision has been made in the Children Act, it has not been implemented.

Chairman

Staff numbers have increased by one third, yet the number supervised in the community has not.

Mr. Dalton

The figures have increased. How many should be placed on probation is a matter for the courts to decide. As the Comptroller and Auditor General said, the figures are rising. The ratio is now better than it was. When the Comptroller and Auditor General reported, approximately 4,100 persons were subject to alternatives to custody. This number has risen to about 4,300 and will continue to climb. The more confident judges become that this is a feasible option which is resourced, the greater the number who will be kept out of prison where, arguably, many of those serving short sentences should not be.

Deputy Connaughton

I congratulate the Comptroller and Auditor General on his excellent report. A fundamental matter is being discussed, one in which members of the public will have more than a passing interest. On the one hand, they must be assured that they and their property are safe and that offenders will actually serve their sentences handed down in court. On the other, there are so many in our prisons who should not be there.

The fundamental matter for consideration by the committee is that of the evaluation of the probation and welfare service so far as community service orders are concerned. The Comptroller and Auditor General could not find an evaluation system in place that could provide conclusive proof that an offender serving his or her sentence in the community under a community service order was more or less likely to reoffend. During the years there has been a debate in the service and the legal profession which has centred on this point. Does the handing down of a custodial sentence encourage people to reoffend more so than a non-custodial sentence?Given the constraint the service can bring under a community service order, can the public be sure at all times it is protected? I understand the Department is unable to inform the committee because no evaluation has been made to prove that one or other would be a better system.Is that the situation?

Mr. Dalton

I acknowledge that there is a dearth of statistics but it is not the case that there is no information available.

Mr. Connaughton

Is there any evidence available?

Mr. Dalton

That is the purpose of the UCD study. We have never undertaken such a specialised study of recidivism rates. The Deputy has made a valid criticism. While I do not have the figures with me, during the years the service examined how it was doing with offenders in terms of the number who reoffended. The record is impressive. However, it might not be valid to compare the record with prison results, because, by and large, those who go to prison are the more serious offenders and inclined to reoffend.

There is a dearth of statistics because the service is overwhelmed and tries to deliver what the courts ask it to deliver. The time spent on research is limited. However, the IT programme which will be delivered this year at a total cost of about €2.3 million will change the scene completely. This is not a bad price for an IT project. There will be a lot more scope for linkages with other organisations and capacity to evaluate what is being done.

Mr. Connaughton

This is about the tenth time I have heard about the famous IT problem. Should it not have been foreseen seven, eight or ten years ago? Why was it not addressed at the time? It seems most Departments acquired the wrong system, as they informed this committee on several occasions. However, in this case it seems there was no investment.

Mr. Dalton

There was. Equipment was purchased. A huge amount of IT equipment is used across the sector. The Department is probably one of the most IT-driven but we simply could not obtain the necessary sanction to get the job done.

Mr. Connaughton

From the figures at the Department's disposal, is it true that it could be stated almost 1,000 persons are in custody who should not be there? For instance, would it not be of benefit to themselves and the community to keep those who do not pay their television licence fee out of jail on community service orders? The public is always interested in such facts. Is the number that high?

Mr. Dalton

I do not believe so. One will not find many in jail for not paying their television licence fee. A high proportion of those in prison are there for solid reasons. It is also the case that a very high proportion have been through every alternative available. That said, there is no doubt that a proportion — I do not know the figure should not be in prison.

Deputy Connaughton

Does Mr. Dalton have the figure?

Mr. Dalton

I do not know how many of those in prison would not be there if we had a better — resourced probation and welfare service. A high proportion of prisoners are serving short sentences, some of whom could be let out of prison. Obviously, only less serious cases would be considered, not those involving violence and so on. The trouble with not having statistics, however, is that I cannot put a figure on it but I would be surprised if it was as high as 1,000.

Deputy Connaughton

Certain people suggest it could be that high.

Mr. Dalton

At one stage in my career I had the daily task of considering which prisoners might be released from prison on temporary release. Sometimes we had a sorry group to choose from in the evening. We were letting out people for accommodation reasons who should not have been allowed out. We did not find many likely candidates for community sanctions, which is not to say there is not a proportion of such prisoners. I do not know how large this group is but if one goes through, as we did at the time, the daily business of deciding who should be released for accommodation reasons, one will find we were releasing many prisoners who were a worry.

Deputy Connaughton

The public, including me, often wonders about those serving shorter sentences for civil debt and similar matters. Somehow it always seems to be the poor who serve a term in jail. The generally held view is that, irrespective of what happens in the world of corporate finance and so forth, no one sees the inside of a jail. Is that a fair statement?

Mr. Dalton

It is misinformation. Many might be sentenced to imprisonment for civil debt but only a very small number of those convicted on such grounds are occupying spaces. With the pressure on spaces, the tendency is to let out such people as fast as possible. I do not have figures to hand but can get them for the Deputy.

Deputy Connaughton

Those figures would be extremely useful to the committee. It is a simple matter of determining whether too many are in custody, which costs a substantial amount of money, a matter to which I will return. In the absence of figures, it is difficult for the committee to draw a conclusion for the report it will make at the end of this discussion on whether greater emphasis should be placed on the community-based approach or if we should have more custodial sentences.

Mr. Dalton

There is no doubt that greater emphasis on community-based approaches is required. While we do not have figures, I am giving the committee the facts based on the experience of all those who deal with this matter. As an assistant secretary, I was approached daily by people advising me as to who might be released at the end of the day. We were looking for people convicted for civil debt and similar offences. Often we ended up letting out drug abusers and people who had been involved in more serious offences such as joyriding. Not many suitable prisoners are available for temporary release at any one time. We often looked for suitable cases so that we could empty places we needed for new prisoners. The general impression that prisons are full of minor, harmless offenders is not true. This group makes up a proportion of prisoners but the vast majority of those in prison are not suitable for release into the community.

Deputy Connaughton

The public does not understand the community system well. Will Mr. Dalton indicate how it works? If an offender has been sentenced in court to the maximum of 240 hours community service, who organises and controls this work and where is it done? Mr. Dalton has mentioned that judges are sometimes not satisfied that an offender could do the sentence. How is the system organised? What work do offenders do and where is it done?

Mr. Dalton

I can answer the questions in broad terms but the principal probation and welfare officer could, with the committee's agreement, give the Deputy much more information.

Chairman

That is fine.

Mr. Dalton

In broad terms, orders are made by the courts and people are sentenced to do a certain amount of community work. There are, I believe, 75 supervisors employed by the probation and welfare service in the community who supervise the work, which is of varying types. The principal probation and welfare officer will give more details.

Deputy Connaughton

I would be grateful to receive them.

Mr. Sean Lowry

Within the context Mr. Dalton has outlined, in accordance with the legislation, probation and welfare officers prepare assessment reports on the suitability of offenders. When a person is considered suitable, he or she is referred to a work project which will have been negotiated between the probation and welfare service and an organisation in the local community. It could be a local church, a local——

Deputy Connaughton

Would it be a FÁS or community employment scheme?

Mr. Lowry

No, they tend not to be FÁS schemes but schemes which allow for manual work to be done. For example, some schemes involve the restoration or decoration of premises such as community centres on behalf of community groups.

Deputy Connaughton

Who oversees the work on a day-to-day basis? I assume the relevant probation and welfare officer could not do it every minute of every day.

Mr. Lowry

The probation and welfare officer takes responsibility for the accountability to the court for the work offenders do on the scheme. The supervision of the work undertaken by offenders on community service is organised by the 75 community service supervisors, to whom Mr. Dalton referred. They have DIY and a range of other skills. As most of those subject to community service orders are relatively unskilled, the scheme tries to engage them in a range of activities of which they are capable. These include landscaping, as in a project undertaken on behalf of the Central Remedial Clinic in Clontarf, or cleaning up an old graveyard, as in the case of a project on Whitworth Road on behalf of the Church of Ireland. The work is done on behalf of a range of organisations and involves general painting, decorating and landscaping, manual work that can be carried out by the majority of those in question.

Deputy Connaughton

If a new policy was introduced to increase the amount of community work involved, would it possible to expand the scheme significantly throughout the country?

Mr. Lowry

Community service orders are implemented in every District Court area and reported on to the court. Every community service——

Deputy Connaughton

I assume the volume would be insignificant in some areas.

Mr. Lowry

There are approximately 1,000 offenders implementing community service orders at any given time throughout the State.

Deputy Connaughton

I have two further questions, one of which relates to supervision. On the temporary release of dangerous prisoners, for instance, those sentenced to life imprisonment for murder who are given parole, how can members of the public be sure that they are safe with such persons in their midst? How sure can the public be that the probation and welfare service, the Garda and everybody else concerned are in a position 24 hours per day to ensure those people do not cause harm to anybody again?

Mr. Dalton

About 60 "lifers" are under the supervision of the probation and welfare service in the community. The record has been very good. Having said that, one can never guarantee that offenders or non-offenders will always behave impeccably. However, very serious attention is paid by the probation and welfare service to those with considerable criminal records.

Deputy Connaughton

Mr. Dalton was in his current position when the Olden report was produced.

Mr. Dalton

Yes.

Deputy Connaughton

He is fully aware that the murder of Nancy Nolan in Galway sparked that off. The perpetrator committed that very foul crime while either on temporary release or parole. He had already murdered another neighbour 20 years previously. It was obvious on that occasion that the public were not protected. Has anything changed since then?

Mr. Dalton

Even in that case, great care was exercised. However, there are failures. Dealing with the release of prisoners is never risk-free. A fresh assessment is being carried out of the basis on which we decide to release people, "lifers" or otherwise, to the probation and welfare service. A number of recommendations were made and they are being implemented. All the recommendations are designed to maximise the care exercised before somebody is released. Even as things stand, reports are issued by prison and probation staff and a fairly complex procedure is engaged in before any serious offender is released. However, even with the best will in the world, the system can get it wrong in certain cases, with tragic consequences.

If we were to proceed to the point of certainty, we would never release anybody. As I stated, the release of prisoners is not a risk-free business. One tries to minimise the risk as much as possible but one can never be absolutely sure.

Deputy Connaughton

On supervision, I understand we do not do any electronic tagging of offenders in Ireland. Why not? Has Mr. Dalton examined this? It appears to work well in some jurisdictions.

Mr. Dalton

Until recent times, the technology was not very successful but I understand that it is now. The Minister has directed the law reform division of the Department to include a provision in the upcoming Criminal Justice Act that will enable the courts to apply electronic tagging in appropriate cases. The statutory provision will be before the Oireachtas shortly.

Deputy McGuinness

Let us consider costs and some of the statistics in the public domain. Following Deputy Connaughton's question on the numbers in prison, I read in a report that more than 1,000 people are sent to jail annually for non-payment of fines or some other civil debt of that kind. It costs €85,000 per annum to keep a prisoner in jail. Therefore, there will be a significant cost to the State if we do not get to grips with the community service concept. As long as we stay in the grey area in which we are at present, which is the reason Mr. Dalton is attending this committee, the State will incur higher costs and will achieve less value for money, apart from the fact that sending people to jail for non-payment of fines is not exactly the most appropriate way to deal with the matter. Other reports suggest that the community service option is the best way to deal with those concerned. We seem to be ignoring that and therefore there is a huge cost to the State.

Understanding the clients with which Mr. Dalton deals and how the system works is essential in dealing with the aforementioned issue. Therefore, largely ignoring reports that were written in 1989 is not getting to grips with the situation. IT has a considerable role to play in this regard. I would love to be able to say that €2.5 million will deal with the issue. There are not many companies with this amount to throw around.

What is Mr. Dalton's view on the Vision report of 1994, which was not implemented? Our figures show that, following the Vision report of 1998, for example, €1 million was sanctioned for IT development, yet there is still no system in place. The system about which Mr. Dalton seems to be talking is driven more by the Department than by the probation and welfare service. If we do not understand what is happening and do not have the systems required to provide us with the necessary reports, how can we be expected to deal with the problems that exist? Will Mr. Dalton comment on the Vision report? Does he consider that the money spent from 1994 to date on that report and on IT thereafter represented value for money?

Mr. Dalton

First, let me explain a few issues concerning the number of people in prison for non-payment of fines. People go to prison for non-payment of a fine only as a last resort. The judge tries everything before this but is left with no other option if the recipient of the fine still refuses to pay. If nobody ever went to prison for failing to pay a fine, then nobody would pay them. Why should one bother if the judge has no sanction? That is the argument for having imprisonment as a last resort.

The Minister is currently considering whether there is another way of dealing with this issue. The major alternative to imprisonment is a fine. If there is no sanction at the end of the process, neither I nor anybody else would bother paying a fine. The judge could do nothing about it.

Consider the 1,000 people sent to prison for non-payment of fines. If you multiplie that number by the annual cost of keeping somebody in prison, you will arrive at approximately €85 million per annum. However, the cost is nothing like that because the prisoners in question are out in jig time. Therefore, the number in prison at any one time for non-payment of fines — I am not saying it is a reasonable figure — is approximately ten. It is a very small number and therefore the actual cost is far less than the annual figure produced if one multiplies 1,000 by €85,000.

On what has been done in terms of IT in the probation and welfare service, we purchased equipment with a view to modernising the service and putting all its procedures on computer. However, we did not succeed at the time in getting sanction for the staff required to do so and therefore the project took off much later than expected. Now that it has taken off, it has proceeded very quickly. Dublin is already computerised, as are some other parts of the country, and all staff will have access to IT at the end of this year. About half the staff have access to it at present. The situation will be transformed in terms of statistics, evaluating the service, etc. I acknowledge, as I did at the beginning, that the current position is unsatisfactory and that is why we are trying to address the matter.

Deputy McGuinness

People are going to jail for non-payment of fines or civil debt.

Mr. Dalton

As a last resort.

Deputy McGuinness

What is the first resort? Does a judge not have an option to order community service and can such a sentence in respect of the non-payment of fines not be exercised to avoid sending people to jail? Is it not a bad reflection on the probation service that, as Mr. Dalton stated, such people are out in jig time? I thought that the jig time was over and that people were serving real time.

Therefore, rather than having people going to jail for some time, Mr. Dalton's job is to examine ways of ensuring those people who owe money or have to pay debts do community service. Is that not what should happen and is that not what should be available as an option for a judge? Why is the option not exercised?

In regard to IT, Mr. Dalton's report in a statement of strategy for 2001 to 2003, the probation and welfare service stated that it did not see IT as a key enabler in improving performance. This is in spite of the fact that, previous to that, a review found that IT was under-developed, despite €400,000 being spent on software and €245,000 on cabling going back to 1994. A system was not delivered but the money was spent. Did the service get value for money or is it dead money? Did the service build on that system or is it now embarking on this new €2 million system which was announced a short time ago?

Will Mr. Dalton address the point in regard to the community service option being available to judges because it is a cost to the State if it is not exercised? Will he also elaborate on the history of the current IT system?

Mr. Dalton

The reason many people serve short periods in prison for non payment of fines is that they pay up. Many people threatened with imprisonment pay up. Oddly enough, that is the argument for having an option of imprisonment. When jail becomes an option for people, they just pay up. This does not happen in all cases. I accept there is no alternative option open to the judge and there should be to apply community sanctions in the case of fines. I already stated: that the Minister is examining alternative penalties for non-payment of fines.

In regard to the IT equipment which was purchased, the money was not wasted. It was diverted because we could not get sanction for the staffing we needed to put in an IT system. We subsequently employed PricewaterhouseCoopers and, with its assistance, we are making use of the equipment we purchased. In the meantime, it had been diverted for a number of stand-alone systems within the probation service. None of the equipment was wasted — it has all been utilised, as will the cabling for the system, with the new system being rolled out at the end of this year. There is no waste involved.

Deputy McGuinness

Will Mr. Dalton address the question of the use of IT in the provision of reports to the courts? A report I read recently stated that 30% of resources are used on staff from the office having to be in court presenting reports or being told to arrange for their presentation.

Mr. Dalton

It will help on a number of fronts, namely, the production of reports, accessing information quickly and so on. There are court presenters in the probation service; therefore, it is not the case that every probation officer who does a report has to be there in person to present it. They are presented by court duty officers. The judge is entitled to ask that the person who prepared a report should attend in court. We can do little if the judge insists that the author of a report turns up and gives evidence. The judge is entitled to do this and it absorbs a certain amount of time. Some 13% of officers' time is spent in court. However, that is an inevitable consequence of preparing evidence for a court.

Deputy McGuinness

Is there no way around that?

Mr. Dalton

As long as the judge feels he or she needs to have in court the person who prepares a report on an individual who is before the court, I do not see that much can be done about it. Otherwise, the judge is being expected to rely on secondary evidence. I do not see a way around it. It is a matter for the judge to decide if he or she needs a particular witness.

Deputy J. Higgins

I want to ask Mr. Dalton about issues in family law but I am intrigued by an aspect of his statement in which he suggests that community service alternatives to custody are undervalued and that when concerns are raised about rising crime, the response the general public expects and usually gets is an expansion of custodial capacity. He goes on to state that the public generally tends to regard non-custodial options as "soft" when headlines about rising crime abound and they tend to see imprisonment as the only right way to deal with offenders. However, it is judges who sentence people to imprisonment. Does Mr. Dalton feel judges are influenced unduly by these sometimes hysterical headlines and therefore make decisions tending towards custody rather than alternatives that might be equally or more valuable in particular cases?

Mr. Dalton

I cannot speak for what happens in the minds of judges when they see headlines. However, the influence in so far as judges are concerned is that they do not really have the credible options they would want. Because the probation service is under-resourced, judges are not fully confident of the merits of putting someone on a probation order because they cannot be sure the level of supervision one might expect from a probation order would be there.

It is not so much that a judge is pre-disposed to sending a person to prison, but because of resource constraints he or she does not have sufficient confidence that if an offender who is marginally dangerous, for example, a joyrider, is sentenced under a supervision order, the necessary supervision will be provided. It is fundamentally a resource problem.

I do not know if what happens in the media reflects the thinking of the general public but the impression one gets when working in a Department such as the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is that, when there are scare headlines, the public expectation is that the only acceptable answer is to increase custodial capacity. It is fair to say that many people consider the idea of sentencing people and dealing with them in the community as a soft option. Public concern is also highlighted when we try to locate probation officers in communities. There is a great deal of resistance to it, based on the public perception that the people visiting the offices are inherently dangerous and undesirable. There is a wide view that it is a soft option, although we do not believe that is the case. Rather, we believe it is a justifiable and proportionate one, although that is not the impression of the general public.

Deputy J. Higgins

I speak as somebody who would have benefited from an alternative to custody but I did not have that choice. Before I deal with family law issues, what came forcefully to my mind were the extraordinary May Day events. There were the usual headlines in the media about the protests that allegedly would be out of control and violent. Quite a number of young people were charged with minor public order offences — this is denied in many cases — which carry a fine of €500 and were detained in Cloverhill Prison for five nights by order of judges before being given bail. Was this not an extraordinary abuse of the prison service? Serious offenders were cleared out to make way for the young people concerned.

Mr. Dalton

I will not comment on decisions made by the courts as it is a matter for them to decide what sentences should be imposed in particular cases. I have not been sufficiently briefed on what happened on May Day and the clearing out of prisons and so on. However, if the committee wishes to raise the matter on another occasion, I will be prepared to deal with it.

Deputy J. Higgins

The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has confirmed that sections of Cloverhill Prison were cleared out in anticipation of young people being sent there. The same logic led the Minister at the weekend to have Guantanamo Bay style cages set up in the industrial estate in Shannon during the visit of President Bush. I will take up this issue in other fora.

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General states the probation and welfare service handled 300 to 400 referrals in family law cases in the late 1980s and early 1990s and that it decided in 1995 to cease producing family law reports because of increased demand in criminal cases and difficulties in recruiting staff. Did the Judiciary, especially those judges who needed reports, not have a say in this decision? Had it a sharp reaction to it? The decision was taken at a time when there was an explosion in the number of family law cases in court, from 19,000 in 1996 to 30,700 in 2001, an increase of more than 60% coinciding with new legislation on the Statute Book that provided for the procurement of reports on children, family circumstances and so on. The current position seems extraordinary.

Mr. Dalton

I agree. Ideally, the probation and welfare service should be geared to deliver the services for which the Oireachtas decides it has responsibility. The problem was that a choice had to be made between criminal work, originally seen as its primary purpose, and civil work. The staff would have been overwhelmed if they had had to handle civil work also. That is the reason the decision was taken. Mr. Lowry will be able to comment on the attitude the judges took to it but I have no doubt they regarded it as unsatisfactory. It simply means that a service is not being provided when it should be.

Deputy J. Higgins

When a judge is confronted with a difficult family law case, what can he or she do about getting more information or an objective assessment of the situation of the children?

Mr. Dalton

Ideally, the judge should be able to call for a probation report but the fact is that is not possible. It is fundamentally a resource issue. Perhaps Mr. Lowry will provide more information.

Mr. Lowry

Before the service to the family law courts was discontinued, the position was that some staff members from the criminal section were allocated to family law work but with the increased demand on the criminal section, it became increasingly difficult to justify this. When the legislation was introduced in 1995, we were faced with the prospect of being flooded with referrals from the family law courts when we did not have the staff to provide that service. A decision was taken at the time that until resources were provided, we could not undertake to provide a service for the family law courts. At the time the decision was made there was a waiting period of nine months from the time a judge asked for an assessment or intervention in a family law case and the capacity of the service to provide it. In terms of delivering justice, such a situation is impossible.

Deputy J. Higgins

That is certainly a novel way of dealing with a problem — when one is confronted with a difficult situation, one discontinues the service completely — it is going from the frying pan into the fire.

The expert group recommended the development of a separate division in the service to deal with family law cases. It appears that those dealing with such cases require special training. I understand the service has undertaken to provide on a one-year pilot basis an agreed small number of reports for the Circuit Court in cases where the custody of children is in dispute. Has progress been made in the steps towards the development of a separate division? Will Mr. Lowry outline the pilot scheme under way? If a separate service for family law cases was to be set up, how many staff would be required to produce reports within a period of weeks rather than nine months, which I agree was ludicrous?

Mr. Lowry

It is one thing to have new legislation introduced, and another to provide the resources required to implement it. We have the more recent example of the Children Act. It takes time for the courts to take up the new provision in the legislation and implement it. It is reckoned that it will be three to four years before the family law courts are geared up to avail of the provisions of the family law Act and that in the region of 100 staff, 70 professional staff and 30 support staff, will be required to provide the service as a separate section of the probation and welfare service.

The Deputy raised the issue of training. One of the benefits of the policy of the service to recruit as probation and welfare officers people who have undergone professional social work training is that they have the basic training required to work with young people, teenagers, adults, families and groups.

Deputy J. Higgins

What about the pilot scheme?

Mr. Lowry

On a number of occasions the service has been requested by the Courts Service to undertake work in the family law courts. Our standard response has been that we are not in a position to do such work until such time as the resources required are provided. Approximately 18 months ago a request was made that we attempt to assist the family law courts in dealing with disputes involving the custody of children under section 47 of the Family Law Act. Our assistance was sought in particular cases. Rather than say no again, we agreed to accommodate the family law courts in a small number of cases. It was possible for us to do so because we were able to devote, on a temporary basis, some of the staff recruited for implementation of the Children Act. They were provided for a 12-month period to facilitate the Courts Service in its work in that area. However, the uptake has been much smaller than anticipated. There will be no further referrals under the pilot scheme after the end of this month.

Deputy J. Higgins

Does that suggest that the relevant provisions of the Child Abduction and Enforcement of Custody Orders Act 1991, which deal with children involved in such cases under The Hague Convention, the Family Law Act 1995, the Family Law (Divorce) Act 1996 and the Children Act 1997, not to mention the trouble taken by Government and Opposition Members to analyse that legislation, were a sham in the sense that there are no resources available to ensure enforcement of the provisions of such Acts when it comes to supervision in family law cases?

Mr. Dalton

The probation and welfare service is not in a position to provide the services envisaged under that legislation. Until such time as the resources issue is resolved, those provisions cannot be implemented. That matter is linked to the much wider issue of public service numbers, for which the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has no policy responsibility.

Deputy J. Higgins

The Comptroller and Auditor General might need to consider the operations of the Oireachtas to see if public moneys are not being wasted in debating for months legislation which will not be implemented in crucial areas such as this.

Chairman

What is the view of the Department of Finance on the enactment of legislation without the provision of funding? Is the curtailment of this significant service having an enormous impact?

Mr. Carey

Members will be aware of the Government decision of December 2002 that there can be no further increases in staff numbers; that in many instances staff numbers are to be reduced over a number of years.

On the allocation of resources, the report states there has been a 14% year-on-year increase since 1995. The figure for pay this year, compared to that for last year, is up 26% to 28%. Staffing levels increased by one third between 2001 and 2003. Therefore, there have been significant increases in both staffing and resources. Obviously, they are not enough but we are operating under a cap coupled with a proposal to reduce public service numbers.

Chairman

Mr. Dalton stated consideration of the recommendations made in 1999 was held up pending completion of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. What is the plan for the future? Will the service compile another report and make more recommendations, or will the Comptroller and Auditor General's report be implemented, given the major deficits identified?

Mr. Dalton

There are a number of exercises under way, some of which relate to measuring workloads to get a more precise fix on what exactly the service is doing. They will be designed to identify areas in which the service could do more or do things differently, in which case there may be greater capacity within the service but that analysis is not yet available.

The purpose in setting up the group is to try to pull together the various strands to see if we can improve efficiency and output. I am not assuming we can or cannot do this. It is my view that no matter what way one looks at this, we are under-resourced, given the expectation of the courts and the public that priority will be given to criminal cases. There are, however, solid reasons for trying to keep as many people out of prison as possible. I suspect that the position following completion of this analysis will be that we will continue to be short of resources.

Mr. Lowry has mentioned that 100 additional staff are required. However, there is a requirement for more resources if we are to tackle the family law responsibilities in respect of which statutory provision has been made. All we can do is note the areas in which shortages arise and make a case to the Government in that regard. As stated by the representative of the Department of Finance, there is an embargo on recruitment to the public service and we are required to reduce numbers. Unless exceptions are made — I am not aware that this is happening — the only way one can obtain resources is by reducing allocations elsewhere, which is notoriously difficult to achieve. Our analysis in pulling the various strands such as IT together will, when completed, provide us with a measure of what we need. We will then make our case to the Department of Finance, although we do not know whether we will be successful.

Chairman

The 1999 report makes 12 far-reaching recommendations which, if implemented, would have an enormous impact on the service. The Comptroller and Auditor General's report refers to the cost comparisons of community-based as against prison based services. It costs approximately €78,000 to keep a person in prison for 22 weeks. However, the matter is not one of cost but of best management practices within the service. There does not appear to be compatibility between the probation and welfare service, the Courts Service, the Garda Síochána and the Prison Service. There is a lot of work that could be done which would not cost a great deal. Judging from the report it appears there is a massive deficit when it comes to ideas.

Mr. Dalton

As I have acknowledged, a lot of work can be undertaken in seeking improvements by way of service level agreements between the courts, the prisons and other organisations. We could make arrangements with organisations to provide probation and welfare officers in good time with the information they need on those with whom they will have to deal. The Department does not receive this information as quickly as it would wish. Such improvements can be made to increase the effectiveness of the service. Some of this work is already under way. In tackling a large area such as family law it ends up becoming a resources issue. I will not pretend that by making the system more efficient we will be able to cope with the work generated.

Deputy Fleming

Jail was mentioned as a last resort for civil debts. Do judges have the power to place attachment orders on people's assets or income? If an individual owes money to the Revenue Commissioners, he or she can ask his or her employer to deduct it at source. The Revenue Commissioners can also go through a variety of other sources. Does the same procedure apply to civil debts in court?

Mr. Dalton

No. The Minister is reviewing this area with a view to introducing legislation for civil debts and fines. In the case of non-payment of fines, there is no facility for attachment orders because unlike, tax defaulters, many of the people concerned have few resources. What the Deputy has said is generally true and there will have to find better and more imaginative ways of dealing with the matter rather than sending people to prison for small civil debts or defaulting on fines.

Deputy Fleming

I disagree with Mr. Dalton that people have little or no resources. Everyone has a source of income, either from employment or State assistance. Many would not default on debts if everyone paid his or her way. It will be a pointless exercise if legislation is introduced without resources being provided to implement it as has happened in the case of other legislation.

At €6,100 for a probation order, €1,500 for a community service orders and €4,000 for supervision during imprisonment, the costs are low. The probation and welfare service operates directly under the control of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform whereas the Prison Service is a separate agency. Does the Department believe it has more direct control over the probation and welfare service?

Mr. Dalton

To some extent. While the Prison Service is a separate agency, it is not on a statutory footing. However, it has benefited from having its own board which runs the service on a day-to-day basis. In spite of this, the staff do not have statutory independence. For example, the director general of the service is still part of the management team in the Department. As a general proposition, it would be better if the probation and welfare service was separate from the Department. The only issue is whether it should exist separately or be part of a wider offender management organisation.

Deputy Fleming

The chart on the supervision of referrals by type from 1995 to 2000 shows that the number of those in prison had gone from under 40% to over 50%. I assume this figure has continued to increase. Up to 2002 probation and community service orders accounted for a lower figure of overall activity. Following this chart, the service engages more with offenders in prison.

Mr. Purcell

That is during deferment of sentence where a judge might want a period of supervision before deciding to sentence an offender. I apologise for any confusion this may have caused but it relates to deferment of sentencing.

Deputy Fleming

I thank the Comptroller and Auditor General for the clarifying the matter. In much of its work is the service involved with prisoners coming up for release?

Mr. Dalton

Mr. Lowry will be able to provide more detail on this. However, the Department is of the view that it is not doing half enough with those coming up for release or others in custody. We are short of probation and welfare officers inside the prisons. Deputy Fleming is correct that this should form an extremely important part of a probation and welfare officer's work. At the end of a long period of incarceration, a releasee is not as well prepared as he or she would be if there were better resources available inside.

Mr. Lowry

During the last six to eight years the whole prison environment has changed with more emphasis being placed on rehabilitation. Approximately 20% of probation and welfare service staff are deployed in prisons with the remaining 80% in the community. This shows that the main work of the service is done in the area of community sanctions. Given the emphasis on rehabilitation in prisons, there is a justifiable argument that the case-load figures for staff working in prisons should be the same as those for those working in the community. Many of the people with whom we work in the community have served prison sentences. Many of those who end up in prison have been subject on other charges to community sanctions.

Deputy Fleming

I am pleased to hear that because my instinct is that the Department wants to utilise the probation and welfare service more. The costs of the service in dealing with prisoners are far lower to the Department than those of the Prison Service —€80,000 — maintaining a prisoner in prison. The greater involvement of the probation and welfare service is a cheaper option for the Department. The president of the Prison Officers' Association believes there is a tendency within the Department to move offenders away from the supervision of prison officers towards the probation and welfare service.

Mr. Dalton

Prison officers welcome rather than resent the opportunity to work alongside probation and welfare officers. Their attitude would not influence the Department's policy. The Department agrees that there is a coterie of offenders who will need all the help they can get when they come out of prison in the long-term interests of society. Unfortunately, some of those who come out, especially those who have been in prison a few times, have a tendency to reoffend. This is not surprising because people coming out of prison often have nowhere to go and no support. They return to the communities where they got into trouble, with their temptations and drugs problems. It is vital to work with them before they get out of prison and help them when they come out. They badly need help. This is an area we are not resourcing in the way we should.

Deputy McGuinness

I do not want to labour the point but having listened carefully to some of the answers given I see this as a management problem. In general terms, it seems to date back to the ignoring of the reports of 1998 and 1999. When flagged by the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, some changes were made. The vision statement of 1994 was not implemented. To answer the question of lack of management and lack of acknowledgement of the content of the reports, Mr. Dalton in his answers reaches for another report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. While the other reports the vision statement and the Comptroller and the Auditor General's repor, which is helpful in identifying management problems are still available, none has been taken on board.

The time of probation and welfare officers is taken up in providing reports for the courts. While some are essential, others do not come within their remit. While reports are being asked for by judges, many of them do not fall within the remit of the work of the service. At the same time Mr. Dalton says the service is directing its resources towards providing support for prisoners. However, prisoners will contradict this, judging by a programme I listened to last night.

I visit the prisons. One sex offender who has almost served his sentence told me he gets no help with regard to returning to his family and community. The criticism on the radio programme in which prisoners were interviewed was directed towards the support they received in regard to returning to their communities. Those in prison for the non-payment of bills, drug or other offences say they do not get the support they need. The clients of the service say they are not getting a service. I note in the reports that the figures included for interviews per prisoner between 1995 and 2000 are 10 in 1995, 12 the following year, nine the next and six the year after that. The figures are falling.

The strain in terms of how the service is functioning is shown in the delivery of services to clients. Ignoring the vision statement and the implementation of an IT strategy to deal with systems and analysis and so on is a sad reflection on management. It cannot be ignored. I cannot ignore it and failed to get an explanation, by means of the questions asked, in respect of the direction the service might be taking. The responses did not help our understanding of the problem in order that we could reflect it in legislation or the approach to the Department of Finance for extra resources for the service.

I am staggered to learn this morning that the service has not got the resources to implement the legislation that we pass or other legislation on family law and other areas. Is the service not proactive? Is it not approaching the Department as legislation is prepared to ask why it should be passed since the service has not got the money to implement it? Why does it not explain to the Department that it is under serious strain, has ignored the various reports compiled and has not got the resources to implement Government policies?

If the service is so under-resourced, or badly managed, how does it deal with the legislation on sex offenders and their release into the community allowed for by the 2001 Act, considering the numbers who now seem to be released and require a lifetime of supervision by the service? How many are there? What does supervision cost the service? What impact has the provision under the 2001 Act had on the service to date? Can we now expect a further deterioration either in the level of supervision or the implementation of legislation that will require the service to supply resources in the area of family law or other areas? Will Mr. Dalton address the issue of prisoners who are seeking support and help before they return to the community, but not getting it, as so many of them are saying?

According to the figures made available in the media and through commentary by Ministers or other political figures, it seems most of those who go to prison for the non-payment of debt — which Mr. Dalton says is paid very quickly once prison is mentioned — are in receipt of social welfare payments of one kind or another. Surely there is a way of dealing with the people concerned by way of community service.

Mr. Dalton

Judges are entitled to ask for reports, which are usually helpful to them. Such reports might help them decide whether someone who seems to deserve a prison sentence should or should not be imprisoned. They are, therefore, very important.

It is not a question of ignoring previous reports or vision statements or bad management. Underlying each vision statement is the belief that the resources necessary to realise the vision will be available. We do not accept without question that there is a shortage of resources. Like all Departments, we make the case for additional resources. As the Department of Finance works within wider Government policy guidelines, we do not always get what we want. As was said, additional resources have been provided but they are not sufficient because they do not enable us to perform functions we should be performing. We need further resources.

Regarding people coming out of prison who are not getting the help needed, I made the point that we were not providing it. However, we would like to provide more help. Resources must be diverted to this area because such persons need help in their own interests, in those of society and keeping crime levels down. No matter how much we play around with resources we still have a problem in this area.

Under the new sex offenders legislation, there are only about ten sex offenders out of prison and under supervision. We know that there is a group of about 100 or so coming down the line who will need to be supervised. The Deputy is correct in saying these people will need careful supervision because of the nature of their offences, and we must find the staff to supervise them. Otherwise we cannot in conscience go along with the idea that such offenders should be released early.

The Minister is carrying out a review with a view to coming up with more imaginative ways of dealing with those in prison only because they have not paid a fine or debt. Proposals will be brought forward and I accept something needs to be done in this regard. The traditional argument for the imprisonment option is that it secured payment but this may not amount to justification for not changing to a different system.

Deputy McGuinness

Is it fair to say the level of engagement with prisoners before their release into the community has almost totally collapsed by virtue of the numbers being released? There are eight places for sex offenders in Arbour Hill Prison, to where some prisoners do not want to go because of a bad experience. Some prisoners do not have access to the facility in stepping from prison life into the community. They are poorly prepared for community and family life. Therefore, the system has collapsed.

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General states that in mid-2003 or thereabouts approximately 140 sex offenders were under supervision in the community on orders made under statute. If there are 140 sex offenders in the community — Mr. Dalton referred to a figure of ten — what level of supervision is involved? If there is no intervention within prison to prepare prisoners for community life, what is happening to the 140 sex offenders in the community? How are their activities being monitored?

Mr. Dalton

The ten people to whom I referred came out of prison under the new legislation. The others may not necessarily have been in prison at any stage. Mr. Lowry will deal with that question in more detail.

It would be a complete misrepresentation of the reality to say the service we provide for prisoners prior to release has collapsed. In fact, it has improved enormously during the years but needs to be improved much more. As Mr. Lowry said, little attention was paid to rehabilitation but the position has changed significantly because we are determined people should be rehabilitated. I am saying, therefore, that we need more resources. However, it is completely wrong to say the service has collapsed.

Multidisciplinary teams interact with prisoners. Representatives of Al-Anon and other organisations which deal with people suffering from stress in the community come to the prisons to provide services. It can be seen, therefore, that probation and welfare officers are not the only ones who attend to the needs of prisoners. Having said that, we need many more. However, I do not want to give the impression that the service has collapsed. In fact, it has improved enormously.

Deputy McGuinness

Perhaps use of the word "collapse" is an extreme way of describing it but the improvement is not borne out by the figures. The report states that in the period 1995 to 1998 there was an average of 31,000 interviews annually, which decreased to 24,000 in 2000. It goes on to refer to the number of interviews per prisoner which decreased by ten in 1995, 12 in the period 1996 to 1998, nine in 1999 and six in 2000. Has there been a huge improvement from 2000 onwards?

Mr. Dalton

It is due to the fact that they shifted to group work. Mr. Lowry will explain what happened. Overall, the service has improved, not disimproved. It is being provided in a different way.

Deputy McGuinness

These are the figures which the service has now managed to overcome by having group sessions.

Mr. Lowry

I refer to the figure of 135 offenders in the community. These are sex offenders who appeared before the courts who were not given a custodial sentence. They are being supervised in the community by community-based staff.

Deputy McGuinness

How does the system operate?

Mr. Lowry

In the same way as anyone convicted of a criminal offence is supervised in the community. Primarily the offender is asked to keep in regular contact with his or her probation and welfare officer. A programme of work is agreed between the two. In relevant cases the probation and welfare officer will keep in contact with the family of the offender. That is the basis of the supervisory work carried out by the service.

The Deputy is correct in saying there are only eight places available on the sex offenders' programme in Arbour Hill Prison. That does not mean, however, that this is the only work done with such offenders. Two probation and welfare officers run the programme in the prison where almost all of the population are sex offenders. The two officers work with offenders on an individual basis, many of whom are not suitable for the programme, on which there eight places available. Much of the preparatory work prior to release is done by these two members of staff. We would like to have four but we do not have the resources.

Deputy McGuinness

That is the point I am making. The level of resources is not adequate. Therefore, the population within Arbour Hill Prison do not receive an adequate service. While the system has not collapsed, it is bordering on this. Sex offenders and other prisoners, including those genuinely trying to make an effort, are complaining publicly about the service they receive. I have heard them do so. I am saying to Mr. Dalton and Mr. Lowry, as managers of the service, that it appears they are not proactively leading change in the service, given the impact of the legislation passed in this House. There is a responsibility on us, as legislators, to ensure the necessary resources are provided. I am saying there is a negative impact because those going back into the community are leaving prison without the necessary level of intervention by the service. It appears the way the service is managed and the lack of IT equipment are causing huge problems when it comes to workload.

Mr. Dalton

It is a matter of what message the public receives. I do not disagree with the Deputy; in fact, it is what I have been saying — more resources need to be made available. However, there is a totally misleading message being given to the public that we are moving from something that was much better to something which is much worse when the opposite is the case. If the public gets the impression from this exchange that there was good system in place which has collapsed or fallen asunder, it will be very scary for vulnerable people, and that is not true. It is improving but not at a fast enough rate.

Deputy McGuinness

I am not sending out that message which has come across clearly from Mr. Dalton. I am just beginning to understand what has been said and it alarms me. It is alarming to learn, as a Member of the Oireachtas, that legislation has been passed by this House which is having a serious impact on the service being provided. The resources required are not being provided. This is having an impact on those prisoners in custody, in respect of which the cost to the State is €85,000. Regardless of how the figures are broken down, it makes far more sense to have suitable persons providing a service in the community at one third of the cost but it appears little or no effort is being made in this regard.

I am concerned at the number of reports which have largely been ignored. The 1994 report to which Mr. Dalton referred was not implemented but somebody had to pay for it. The taxpayer will also pay for the PricewaterhouseCoopers report. I have not heard any evidence that value for money was achieved in drawing up these reports. There is a serious problem which Mr. Dalton, not I, has highlighted.

Mr. Dalton

I do not want to disagree with any Deputy but that is not my point. If the proposition is that we do not have enough resources, for example, to deal with family law cases, I have no difficulty in acknowledging this. However, the message I do not want to go out is that, in regard to offenders who constitute a threat to the community, the situation has gone from better to worse — it has not. While we need more services for sex offenders and other serious offenders coming back into the community, they are better managed and prepared than they were ten years ago. That is the main message.

The public will not be scared if it discovers we are not dealing with family law cases. However, elderly people will be scared if they get the message that there was a service for those who were a serious threat but it is no longer available. I am not saying the Deputy is trying to——

Deputy McGuinness

To what is Mr. Dalton comparing it? What code of best practice was in place ten years ago? What changes have taken place since in terms of the crimes being committed, the treatment and care provided in the Prison Service and the work the probation and welfare service undertakes with the courts? There is nothing to compare it with. The IT and management systems which should be in place to assist us to achieve value for money and understand the system we operate and the clients with whom we deal are not in place, as stated in the report.

If the probation and welfare service does not know with what it is dealing, how can Mr. Dalton make the comments he has made? I do not understand how he can continually say the service is under-resourced. If so, given the importance of the service, something should have been done about it, not because of the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General but because of the need for best practice in management. The service should have demanded legislation and support to deal with prisoners. From Mr. Dalton's answers, I am trying to build a picture as to how best we can help in terms of the legislation we pass. I am not happy with what I have discovered at this meeting.

Mr. Dalton

We could go on with this. However, it is not a matter of best practice in management but of resources. One cannot manage better if one does not have something to manage. I will come back to the main point I wanted to make.

Deputy McGuinness

Will Mr. Dalton provide a list of requirements in terms of the number of extra staff he wants, the extra IT resources and the structure required to deal with the courts and the preparation of reports? Is PricewaterhouseCoopers preparing a report?

Mr. Dalton

No, PricewaterhouseCoopers is dealing with IT resources. As I mentioned, the exercise in which we are engaged will pull all of the strings together and produce the information to which the Deputy refers.

I will return to my previous point. I do not want to give the impression that we are doing less than some years ago in the case of serious offenders who are a threat to others on being released from prison. It is not true. That is the only message with which I am concerned.

I acknowledge the points made about the lack of resources and the failure to deal with family law cases which we should be doing. However, I do not want to send out a disturbing message that there is either indifference or a lack of care. We are doing as much as possible and providing increased resources for preparing prisoners for release. This is what the ongoing management project in the prisons is focused on, as well as establishing better links with the community.

Many initiatives are under way in the prisons designed to make sure released prisoners, especially those who constitute a threat to the community, are as well prepared as we possibly can make them. I would be very concerned if the opposite impression was given. While we need more resources, it is not a question of moving from a better to a worse situation.

Deputy McGuinness

The statement "as we possibly can", cast against the backdrop of the need for more resources, causes me great concern.

Mr. Dalton

You can only do the best you can.

Deputy McGuinness

Mr. Dalton used the phrase "the best you can". That is the issue. The probation and welfare service is dealing with a serious set of circumstances across its area of responsibility. Is "the best you can" good enough? I would like to know more about the cost of improving the service in order that we will not have the worry I now have having listened to Mr. Dalton.

Chairman

I appreciate the points made by Mr. Dalton and Mr. Lowry on what has been done with the resources available. Consideration of the 1999 recommendations was deferred. Given that we have waited for the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, the committee would be disappointed if we had to wait for another assessment which could take a further year and a half. We are discussing the sum of €40 million in regard to a critical element of State services, in respect of which the Comptroller and Auditor General has produced an extraordinary document which is supported by Mr. Dalton and Mr. Lowry. The message should go to Mr. Carey and the Department of Finance that it would be disappointing if there was no immediate action on the report, regardless of where the money came from or the cost to the Exchequer.

The Department of Finance should address the issues. I have chaired this committee for almost two years and in that time this is the most disappointing report. Mr. Dalton stated that, despite a clear determination since 1999, there were major restrictions and a major curtailment of cash to implement what he believed was an essential service in the 21st century. When compared to the miscalculation of €9 billion referred to yesterday in a different report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, €40 million is not so much for an essential service. I put down a clear marker to the Department of Finance that I want a report on what action will be taken in this regard in order that when Mr. Dalton returns to the committee, he will not have to mention the issue of resources.

A cost-benefit analysis should be carried out. Deputy McGuinness wanted to know how much money was needed. That is the question. I expect Mr. Lowry and Mr. Dalton to tell us the amount required to introduce the service demanded.

Deputy McGuinness

I support the Chairman. That is essential if our work is to be of any value to the State.

Mr. Carey

The Department of Finance will react to any requests from the Department and the probation and welfare service.

Chairman

I assure Mr. Carey that this committee will want to respond to the report. Is there any other issue?

Deputy McGuinness

No. The report the Chairman has demanded is absolutely essential. The sooner we have it the better because someone has to quantify what is required. I have not questioned the representative of the Department of Finance because it is time it engaged with Mr. Dalton and received a report in order that we can continue this debate.

Mr. Purcell

I understand the bind in which the Department of Finance and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform find themselves in cases such as this. It is standard procedure when proposals are being introduced, either legislative proposals or proposals in memoranda to Government, that there is a spot to be filled about the cost. I have not seen the memorandum which would have supported the developments in family law written into the Statute Book. I have no doubt that costs were assigned and put before the Government in passing proposals. The difficulty arises when a cap is put on recruitment to the public service. This is seen not only in the probation and welfare service but also in hospitals and those parts of hospitals standing idle. This is part of a broader difficulty when policies do not necessarily gel fully.

We did receive every support possible from the probation and welfare service in doing this report. However, there was very little information on how staff resources were deployed in its various activities such as supervision reports, compilation work in prison and so on. The staff co-operated in carrying out surveys of how they spent their time. They put a steering group together to find out if it was representative of the service in general in order to put the information into the report so that we could have the kind of debate we are now having. I hope the working group which has been set up can take matters forward. In general it is very difficult to carry out value for money reports without the co-operation of Departments and agencies. In this case the support of the people on the ground was essential to enable us to put the report together in order that we could have some figures on which we could base our conclusions. I should have stated all of this at the beginning but as an attentive observer of Mr. Dalton and Mr. Lowry, I should state that much of their work went into this also.

Chairman

I thank the Comptroller and Auditor General for his outstanding report. I also thank Mr. Dalton and Mr. Lowry. Their frankness and openness were much appreciated. In the light of what we have discussed, I will not note this report because of what we have requested from the Department of Finance. In October I hope we will be discussing this report again with an update on the estimated cost and what is needed. The Department of Finance has to sit down with representatives of the probation and welfare service and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to work out what is being done and where the funds have gone.

I am very disappointed that legislation has been brought before the House without a cost being put on it. We can fill the House with aspirational legislation but if we do not have the cash to implement it, we are fooling the public. It is just not good enough. The sooner this message comes from the committee the better. If there is no commitment of cash to incoming amending legislation, it should not be pushed because it is not doing anything for democracy. I hope we will have a more detailed debate in November on what Mr. Lowry believes is required to provide a comprehensive service and that this will be approved by Mr. Dalton.

I compliment Mr. Dalton on the outstanding work he has done as Secretary General. It is a very difficult job which he has performed with extraordinary style and commitment. On behalf of the committee, I thank him for his outstanding service as a public servant in his critical role as Accounting Officer. I wish him the best of luck, good health and prosperity in the future.

Mr. Dalton

Thank you very much. You might have been wondering why I was looking so relaxed about the November report. Now you know.

Chairman

At our next meeting at 11 a.m. on Thursday, 8 July, we will deal with the residential institutions redress scheme.

The witness withdrew.

The committee adjourned at 2.05 p.m. until11 a.m. on Thursday, 8 July 2004.