Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): The officials from the Department of Justice who are providing evidence today are Michael McAvoy, director of the community safety division, and Matthew Neill, head of electronic monitoring (EM). You are very welcome to the Committee. Thank you very much. I hope that you did not have to wait too long. I invite you to make an opening statement.

Mr Michael McAvoy (Department of Justice): Thank you, Chair, and thanks for the opportunity to come here to discuss electronic monitoring. I trust that Matt and I will be able to address any queries that the Committee has. We had a chance last year — last February, so almost a year ago — to brief the Committee on electronic monitoring, so today will hopefully serve as a helpful update.

I will provide a bit of background on electronic monitoring. Amongst its other responsibilities, the public protection branch in the Department's community safety division has policy, legislative and operational responsibility for electronic monitoring in Northern Ireland, which is more commonly referred to as "tagging". Tagging is a tool that we use as part of our overall public protection regime. Electronic tags in Northern Ireland are used to monitor individuals who are released into the community in two particular scenarios: first, under bail terms that have been set by a court after a person has been charged with a criminal offence by the police but before they have been to trial; and, secondly, as part of the conditions for a prisoner 's leaving custody to serve out the remainder of their sentence in the community under the terms of a licence. At any time in Northern Ireland, there are roughly 400 people with electronic tags. Over a year, about 1,200 people will be on a tag. Tags can be fitted for days, weeks or months. It is quite a dynamic picture, and it evolves throughout the year.

When we previously briefed the Committee, we were in the throes of completing a very lengthy procurement exercise to appoint a new provider to our electronic monitoring service. The Department awarded the contract to a firm called Buddi in March 2025, with delivery of its tags commencing in September 2025. During a transitionary period that started at that time, anyone then placed on a tag from 1 September went on to the new Buddi tag, after which the full transfer from one provider to another happened. We managed to complete that about a month ahead of schedule, at the end of October . Committee members at the time asked about a potential loss of jobs that might result as part of that transfer from or displacement of local employment. I am pleased to advise members, as we noted in our update to you, that under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, or TUPE, arrangements, most of the staff who had been employed by the previous provider transferred across to the new provider. That was particularly welcome, because we are talking about staff who had a considerable amount of experience of and familiarity with the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland. Buddi also recruited a number of staff to work directly in its remote monitoring centre, and on the Northern Ireland contract in particular. The company now has a Northern Ireland base of operations situated in Belfast, and, as you know, we are looking to expand the service. If we utilise the new technology that is becoming available to us, we hope that, down the line, further job opportunities will be created.

The service that Buddi is now providing is a like-for-like service and is comparable to the curfew monitoring arrangements that we have had in place for a number of years. A key aspect of the procurement process, however, and the leading reason that we embarked on appointing a new provider, was to future-proof the service. The procurement specifications included a requirement that any new provider would be able to offer location tagging, as opposed to just curfew tagging, over the five years for which the contract was awarded. For the first time in Northern Ireland, we will therefore be able to avail ourselves of GPS functionality and all the possibilities that that offers for electronic tagging.

We also have the scope to test things such as sobriety tags, which monitor drug or alcohol consumption. In short, we are genuinely looking to transform and modernise the service.

The Committee will be familiar with the public-sector transformation fund. One of the departmental bids to the fund related to the modernisation of electronic monitoring in Northern Ireland. Ours was one of the original 47 bids. We were delighted that it was one of the six that were recommended for funding. We secured £2·19 million to establish a multidisciplinary team (MDT), bringing in colleagues from the police, the Probation Board for Northern Ireland (PBNI), the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) and the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS) to explore fully how we might tap into the use of GPS location monitoring in Northern Ireland. Put simply, the motivation is to use the new technology that is available, explore its potential to protect the public and its potential contribution to the rehabilitation of an offender and possibly add a tool that will assist in crime detection and investigation.

Around this time last year, or perhaps before then, Matt and I volunteered to wear tags. It is an interesting experience to go on tag for a week and be told not to go to North Street in Belfast but do go, only for someone to be on the phone before I get out of the lift. It genuinely gives one an insight into what it is like to wear a tag and to be on tag.

I will stop there, Chair, if you wish, and hand back to you. I could talk about GPS tagging, its potential uses and so on, but I can come back to that.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. I will bring in members.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you for your presentation, Michael. I was here when you were before the Committee about a year ago. As you said, we were discussing whether Buddi would have a physical presence here and, likewise, what that would mean for employment during the transitionary period. We are now well aware of the new operations hub that has been established in Belfast. It provides 24-hour coverage — is that correct? — 365 days a year. How many staff have been employed to run all its operations and its office management, including staff training and field monitoring staff to fit and remove the tagging equipment and provide evidence of and reports on any breaches and non-compliance? How many staff work directly in the remote monitoring centre in England? We had some concerns that they would be working remotely and would fly over only now and again. What are the staffing arrangements? Will staff be present here? Are they more accessible? Have there been instances of breaches and non-compliance? Can you shed some light on all of that?

Mr Matthew Neill (Department of Justice): Will I take that?

Mr McAvoy: Yes, you are probably best placed to speak about the staff in Belfast and in the centre that Buddi has across the water and about how everything is going. We have had the Buddi staff since 1 November, so they have been bedding in for a few months. We are just getting to the sort of business-as-usual stage with them.

Mr Neill: Yes, pretty much. You are right to say that there are two separate components to the staffing arrangements. We have the field monitoring staff. To be honest, that was always the type of service provision in Northern Ireland. An operations manager governs a team with a few team leaders in it. I do not have the exact staffing complement in front of me, but I think that there are around 12 staff in total. They work to a shift-based pattern. They are then able to fulfil all the orders that are submitted through the courts to install and deinstall tags and to make any changes that may need to be made.

At any given time, the remote monitoring centre has, I think, three to four staff on shift, working either daytime or night-time shifts to provide the 24/7 coverage. To give you a bit of context, the way in which it works in practice is that the individual is under curfew from a particular time, which, most of the time, will be during the hours of darkness, so perhaps from 9.00 pm to 8.00 am. The individual is required to be at their home address only during those hours, so most of the installations, unless done by prior agreement with the individual, take place at night-time. The field team's really busy period is usually from 6.00 pm right through until perhaps midnight, when it will gather equipment, go and complete the installations and help individuals understand how to comply.

The monitoring centre, which does operate remotely, will then deal with any queries that come in from an individual on tag, queries from criminal justice agencies and, if there are breach reports, any breaches that come through. That data is sent by the devices to the centre and comes up on a live system. Staff are alerted to the data, and they then work through a series of processes to address it. At any time, anyone who is involved in the system, whether a service user or a representative of a justice agency, can pick up the phone and contact the Northern Ireland monitoring centre team directly and engage with them on whatever business they have.

Ms Ferguson: Is that where the three or four staff are?

Mr Neill: Yes.

Ms Ferguson: They do not go out, but they are based in Belfast.

Mr Neill: No. The monitoring centre staff are completely separate from the field team. There are two separate teams. The field staff predominantly live and work in Northern Ireland constantly. They are the ones who go out and have face-to-face contact with citizens on tag. The monitoring centre then deals with the data that comes through so, if a person has breached, for example, staff there respond to that breach. I do not want to use the analogy of a call centre, as the monitoring centre it is a lot more sophisticated in some ways. Staff there take on board the information, contact the individual, confirm a breach, look at the evidence and, ultimately, if a breach is found to have occurred, issue a report to police or the probation service.

Ms Ferguson: There are 12 field staff. They not only fit the equipment but advise and guide people by saying, "This is what the tag is. These are the rules and regulations". They are also there to be alerted through the remote monitoring centre about any breaches and then go out and deal with them. Is that what happens?

Mr Neill: If they are required to, yes. If, for example, an individual had cut off their tag or had damaged a piece of equipment in the house, the monitoring centre would deal with that query initially. Perhaps the individual communicated directly to say, "I have cut my tag off", "I have had an accident" or, "The power has gone off". If that necessitates a member of the field staff attending the address again, they can be responsive, but they will attend only during the hours of curfew, because that is when the individual is required to be there. They are completely connected teams, but they fulfil two different functions.

Mr McAvoy: I will give you a few more statistics. The monthly figures for December show 160 installations and 163 deinstallations, and there were then variations to the licences communicated. It is busy. That is why staff have to be out and about in the field. It is not dissimilar to the arrangement with the previous provider, however. It is not uncommon to have a central monitoring base, possibly across the water, but the field staff physically have to go out and respond if there is a breach, as Matt said.

Ms Ferguson: What percentage of breaches and non-compliance is there?

Mr Neill: Our billing process works in the following way. We pay a monthly fixed rate fee. That is for staffing and to have the whole contract in place. We then pay a range of variable bills. Billing is pretty much demand-led, as it depends on how many orders come from the courts, as Michael says. There are then the installations, the deinstallations and the equipment changes. That is how we present our billing. Within the billing, we have a series of key performance indicators that come in quarterly. We have really had only our first quarterly report in that covers three months of service with solely Buddi on the page.

I am fairly confident that things are going pretty well, by and large. We have taken a little bit of time to onboard our partners and to raise awareness and understanding of how this contract is slightly different from the previous one. The equipment is very similar, but the information that we give service users is probably more developed in order to give them a better understanding of how to comply with their licence or bail conditions and of who they can contact in an emergency. We try to provide all that information. Most of the KPIs are in the green at the minute. There are a few that are probably in the yellow, and that is really because it is a graduated process. Every month, or probably fortnightly at the minute, we contact Buddi to ask it to update reports, look at some of the detail to help inform the supervising agencies, such as the police or the probation service, so that they can understand what they are seeing. It is the same dinner but slightly differently presented.

As I said, though, things are going pretty well, by and large. We are starting to develop a brand-new evidence base. At a future point, I want be in a position in which we can share hard metrics with the Committee to show volume, performance and things in general. We are very surprised that things have moved very quickly with a new provider, and one that had not previously operated in Northern Ireland. I put on record our thanks to G4S, the previous provider, which helped support a very effective mobilisation and transition.

Michael said earlier that we transitioned everybody probably a month earlier than we had expected to. We could not have undertaken that transition successfully without both providers working collaboratively on it. For context, we had 380 people on one of the tags. Over a period of months, we had to move them from one service on to the new service. We communicated with the individuals in writing a number of times to make the transition as easy as possible for them. With the providers working together, however, we were able to do that pretty well.

Mr McAvoy: All the kit from one supplier had to be taken out and the new kit installed, so that involved a lot of work over a couple of months, but the two providers worked very well together. In fact, we are a bit ahead of ourselves. I said that, on average, that there are 400 people on tag, but there are probably 426 in Northern Ireland today.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you. You mentioned monitoring drugs and alcohol consumption.

Mr McAvoy: With sobriety tags.

Ms Ferguson: Yes, those are new. I had not heard of them before.

Mr McAvoy: A sobriety tag is another bit of kit, Ciara, that we have not had before. We have not had GPS in Northern Ireland, and we certainly have not had something as fancy as a sobriety tag. It is a tried-and-tested method. It is a contact device that someone who takes alcohol is required to use. It is a bit like a tag in the sense that, if there is a breach, it will trigger an alarm that alcohol is being consumed. I am partial to a gin and tonic, and I have volunteered to be in the cohort for the tag to sit in the house and drink alcohol to trigger an alarm somewhere. I do not mean to be glib, but that is what happens. In many ways, the feedback that we have got about the sobriety tag is that it can be very effective in helping someone on their journey to desistance from alcohol. Matthew, you have talked to Buddi about it, and it has given us a few demonstrations of some of the kit. We have been concentrating on moving from one system to the other and on business as usual. We have done that successfully, and now, with the multidisciplinary team that the public-sector transformation fund is funding, there is an opportunity to consider all the kit that we have not had a chance even to think about deploying before.

Mr Neill: The aptly named AlcoTag, which is Buddi's branded term for it, is the product to which we have access, and we intend to pilot it during the transformation project. That is the product that is on the market now, and a few new ones are coming out. It looks the same as a normal tag for GPS monitoring, but it contains additional technology that does transdermal alcohol detection. It will detect the amount and levels of alcohol in the sweat coming off the skin, similar to what Fitbits and other devices do by monitoring heart rate and things such as humidity. There is a sensor on the tag that detects alcohol.

The novel thing about this compared with other technologies is that it is not about answering the binary question of whether someone has taken alcohol or not. It will give you that information, but the other, really attractive prospect for some of our criminal justice partners is that it can show levels of alcohol consumption. If somebody were a habitual alcohol user and had issues with it that perhaps contributed to their offending, upon their being released from prison, consumption would show as a bar chart as a result of the tag. You could see that they had had x number of units on a Friday or a Saturday. Perhaps they would be on an alcohol dependency programme, so you could see consumption dipping or going up, depending on how they were behaving in the community and engaging with different treatment programmes.

The sobriety tag is therefore another piece of evidence that could be used to help inform risk management, as opposed to our saying, "This person is an alcoholic. They take alcohol and offend, so they should not have any". It might be about managing the level of consumption and helping them on an abstinence journey as well as on a journey of reduced offending. We are really attracted to exploring the use of the sobriety tag. In the sequencing, let us look at GPS first and then bring in that technology so that we can at least pilot some of its uses and work with our partners to see how they might use it.

Ms Ferguson: That is good to know. I have just come from a meeting on minimum unit pricing with the all-party group on stroke. I really like the education piece about people being more educated on unit intake, and that tag could play a role. Thank you. I was just curious.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Michael, what right does the Department of Justice have to deprive you of your gin and tonic after a stressful day? [Laughter.]

Mr McAvoy: There must be legislation somewhere. I would be volunteering on behalf of the Department to provide a public service.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I jest, of course, but does someone who is using a tag and has issues with alcohol consumption have to meet conditions?

Mr McAvoy: Yes, someone who is on licence has to meet conditions about consumption of alcohol.

Mr Neill: Conditions are included in court bail and in licences. It is fair to say that I am not aware of anything in statute about alcohol monitoring as a specific element of the electronic monitoring component. We would need to explore the detail further. The legislation is quite clear on monitoring a curfew electronically and on monitoring a person's whereabouts, which would open the door to the GPS element. We would, however, need to explore further areas such as alcohol consumption and sobriety and look at the legislative base to see whether something more is required. From a lot of the learning that we have taken on board so far — again, it is early days, as the team is just being formed — we know that there is a voluntary element available. Under licence conditions currently, the Probation Board may require an individual to be subject to drug or alcohol testing, usually through urinalysis.

The tag would just be an additional piece of technology that we could use. There are some doorways that we could push at with our partners, if there were significant demand for it. I make it clear that we have not really explored whether there is demand for the service from our partners yet. GPS is very much seen as a high priority, so it is potentially about looking at that technology over a longer time. The market in the United States for Buddi's product that measures alcohol consumption appears to be its fastest-growing one, however. It works in tandem with the GPS component to prevent people going somewhere where they can buy alcohol, but, if they do manage to access it, recordings will be provided.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Sad as I am, I recently looked at the powers that the police have to stop and test people for alcohol and drugs. There are specific powers in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003, I think, and the Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order 2007. Use of that technology would lead to a new Bill, I imagine.

Mr Kingston: Thanks, Michael and Matthew. The session has been interesting so far. Will you explain the main differences between the Buddi tag and what was in place previously? Did the previous tag not use GPS at all? Did it require some sort of detector to be placed in the home?

I will ask my other two questions now. Where are savings being made? The public-sector transformation fund is expected to deliver permanent, ongoing savings. Do people wear their tag 24/7, or, under certain conditions, do they have the right to take it off at certain times?

Mr McAvoy: I will answer the handy one first, Brian: it is 24/7.

To answer your first question, the move from G4S to Buddi is a move to a like-for-like service. The tagging that we have in Northern Ireland is pretty rudimentary. It uses radio frequency (RF), so there is a base unit in the home. A person wears the tag and has a bail or licence condition to be at home overnight, from 10.00 pm to 7.00 am, and, if they stray beyond the parameters of the monitoring device, they will be in breach. All that it does is monitor a person's curfew conditions at typically a home address. We have simply gone from radio frequency with G4S to like-for-like radio frequency with Buddi.

It is only now, with the funding and the ability to set up a team, with partners, that we have the opportunity to explore the functionality of GPS. We have not rolled it out, but, to go back to the Chair's point, we might get to a position in which we look at having a volunteer cohort that is willing to use GPS tagging. As we explore that, there are lots of examples on which to draw. Buddi is an international provider, but, at a recent conference, 34 constabularies in England gave testimony on the effectiveness of AlcoTag and another device that looks to me like a breathalyser. You might think, "It would be dead easy just to get somebody else to use it to bluff that one", but it contains an AI component, a camera and a fingerprint reader. Buddi has thought about all those things, as you can imagine. Changing providers is a straight move from radio frequency to radio frequency, with GPS monitoring being down the line a bit, Brian.

You are right about the public-sector transformation fund. Its board expects us to make savings. To be fair, we told it that the benefits would be seen more in public protection. If GPS can be used to set zones that limit where people can go, and that can be monitored remotely, as opposed to setting a licensing condition and then having to detect someone's breaching it by going into or close to a town or an area where they are not supposed to be, that remote monitoring will provide a lot more reassurance for victims, and it will save the resource that would otherwise be spent on trying to detect someone in breach. It will therefore enhance public protection.

GPS will also potentially help the offender's rehabilitation. Its specificity is phenomenal. Parameters could be set within which someone can leave their home to go to a course in a further education college, go to Alcoholics Anonymous or go to a gym while being restricted from entering, say, Larne or Belfast or from leaving greater Belfast. All of that is possible, as we demonstrated through testing as part of the procurement process.

Those, hopefully, are the answers to your questions on switching from G4S to Buddi, on the savings and on the tag's having to be worn 24/7.

Mr Neill: The only other thing that we did not have as part of the previous contract was the capacity to have GPS. That is certainly one of the big add-ons.

The secondary part of that is that it is incorporated: there is live-time access to the system. Radio frequency technology is fairly rudimentary: it determines whether someone is at home when they are supposed to be, and, if they are not, that is reported to the appropriate agency. The GPS element opens the door to so many other types of monitoring in an appropriate risk-management fashion. There is live access to the system. Take a scenario in which a Probation Board staff member is supervising a case, looking at risk management and engaging with the individual. Perhaps they are being given a narrative about what that individual has done or how they have behaved that week. That can all be confirmed and validated using an evidential tool, such as GPS. If an individual is given the ability to travel to an area in order to engage in an alcohol programme or to go to a funeral in an area in which they would not normally be allowed, did they behave? Did they validate the terms of their agreement to be released to that area for a brief period, or did they fail to comply? That can be reported back. It is a digital solution to physical monitoring.

A number of bail or licence conditions that are used by agencies at the minute require third-party reporting almost or CCTV evidence. Was that individual outside their victim's home? Is it a he-said, she-said scenario? With GPS, there would be an evidential base — a piece of technology — that reports to a live system. That would look like a map on a screen, with different alerts, and you would be able to look at where that individual was at 3.00 pm or 3.05 pm, and at whether they were loitering near a school, for instance. The volume of information that will be available to agencies — obviously, we would have to safeguard that information very carefully — should open the door to a lot of other risk-management possibilities. Having access to that information live, as opposed to getting a report after the fact, is another big change in the contract.

Mr Kingston: I am just trying to understand where we are. We have changed from G4S to Buddi. The GPS element has not been activated at this stage, but it can be added to the new system: is that right?

Mr McAvoy: That was a key element of the procurement: the company had to affirm that, whenever we were ready to take it, it would have the capacity to extend that service to us. Part of the procurement process was to test its ability and track record in doing that in other jurisdictions.

Mr Kingston: Is that going to happen, then? Does a decision need to be made, either by the Assembly or the Minister, or is the intention to move into that?

Mr McAvoy: The intention is to move into that. That is part of the public-sector transformation fund work.

Mr Kingston: So, that will happen.

Mr McAvoy: It will happen quicker because of the additional resource from the transformation fund. As I mentioned, there is a victim component. A victim of stalking, for example, will take more reassurance from that than they would from being told that the perpetrator cannot go within a mile of their last known home address or workplace. I imagine that, if a victim knows that that can be monitored remotely, and that a breach can be detected, that will give them a lot more confidence.

It is important to say that we are not heading towards 'The Truman Show'. There is no Bond villain's lair, from where we follow people at all times everywhere; it is specific to the particular lawful purpose, namely the bail condition or the licence condition. It is not about surveilling people; it is using technology to monitor their compliance with a set of conditions.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Could it also be used for the public protection arrangements in Northern Ireland (PPANI) with regard to sex offenders?

Mr McAvoy: Yes. We are weeks away from Matt and the team's being joined by a dedicated resource from the police, the Prison Service and the Probation Board to think their way through all of that. I have no doubt that that will give us a spur to investigate all the possible scenarios in which we could use it, including ending violence against women and girls. We are looking to identify a cohort of offenders for whom we roll it out and on whom we test it. Serious sexual and violent offenders is one such cohort. There are lots of examples. Authorities in the south of England are particularly interested in high-end shoplifters. That will not be a priority for us, but I can see why keeping a prolific offender out of Sloane Square, say, might be important for the Met. That will not be our focus, but we will look to see where we can get maximum benefit for victims, public protection and rehabilitation.

Mr Kingston: OK. Thank you.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you very much for your briefing, which has been very informative. The Department indicated that it would hold monthly and quarterly meetings with Buddi, alongside reviews of service data, to ensure that full effect is being given to monitoring orders. Can you confirm whether those targets have been met?

Mr Neill: Absolutely. We are probably doing more than we would normally be required to do through a contract. Because this is a brand-new contract that commenced in September, and we had a mobilisation period, to be honest, we are talking to Buddi two or three times a week to see whether everything has been met. We are auditing some of the data as we go, just to make sure that everything is bedding in correctly. We do not want to be in a scenario, a few months down the line, where we have not looked at certain things that might have arisen. We want to make sure that the orders that come through from prisons, probation or the courts are being given effect in the timely manner that we expect, and that reports are being issued at the right time. As I said earlier, we get variable billing quarterly to look at all of that. We can match that against the data. We do more than a 10% check and build that in.

Ms Finnegan: OK. What, if any, feedback has been received from criminal justice organisations and partners around the new service provider since the transition?

Mr Neill: We are building in meetings with our service partners as well. I was with the Probation Board this morning to talk about EM. The feedback that we have received to date is that this is a similar service but the reporting looks different. It is about agencies' interpretation of it and trying to make it clear. In the first few weeks, we were trying to streamline a few pieces of narrative on the breach report that is issued. The breach report is issued by email to the appropriate agency. If it goes to the police, it goes to a central point there and is tasked out. If it goes to probation, it goes to a central point there and is then given to the administrative team that deals with that offender. We got a bit of feedback on how the breach is reported. Is it clear that the individual left their address at a particular time? Some agencies wanted to know when that person came back. We have that additional information. The contract does not require Buddi to tell us when they are there, but agencies find that useful. Was it a 15-minute breach or a 40-minute breach? Were they away overnight? Buddi can provide that information on request. After receiving one of those reports, Buddi can contact the agencies directly, 24/7, to give them the information.

The feedback is that it is a very similar service. There is a lot of interest in the GPS element. We are working with the management of front-line teams. We would like to do a bit more engagement on the understanding of EM broadly. It is a new contract. Our partners expect that the information that Buddi presents will be identical to what G4S presented previously. It is about education. It is the same information and the same data, but the presentation is slightly different. It is about making sure that they are confident with it. We have a bit of awareness raising and training to do with some of our partners to give them that understanding.

By and large, however, we have received relatively reasonable feedback. Our partners like having access to the system, through us, to verify whether an order has been given effect: "When was my service user tagged? Can you confirm that with probation? Can you give me any additional information as to when they left their property on a certain date?". It is things like that. We are getting that feedback on a case-specific level, but we have built in feedback loops and regular meetings with management teams to allow for that process to happen. As time goes on, we will evolve things. We may need to review the contract. We have built in a fixed review period for the contract for every year, with a formal three-year review of all the terms and conditions, going right down to the granular data. It is a five-year contract, with the opportunity to extend it for a further three years and two years after that.

Ms Finnegan: Have the KPIs been met to date?

Mr Neill: The majority of the KPIs have been met. I do not have all of the data in front of me, but the majority have been met. Where we have identified any minor slippage so far, we have been very quick to act. Buddi has been very responsive to any engagement. We have moved the goalposts slightly in a few areas to determine whether any additional data can be provided to service users, or whether information on the reports can be given to probation; it may be that the police do not need that information but probation would like it. We are adapting some things as we go. However, I have to say that performance has been very good so far. We will continue, in regular meetings, to monitor that in conjunction with our partners in Construction and Procurement Delivery (CPD) and look at all of the terms and conditions in the contract.

Ms Finnegan: No problem. Thank you.

Ms Sheerin: Thanks to you both for your briefing and for answering our questions. My questions are about the specifics of the costs and the timing. I note that the multidisciplinary team has two independent experts. What is the cost of those experts? On timing, you said that we are weeks away. Is it as close as that?

Mr McAvoy: We were keen to retain those two academics. They will perform a role, Emma, of critical friend and bring subject expertise to the multidisciplinary team. The team will be put in place, with its membership being appointed from the police, the Probation Board and the Prison Service. We are weeks away from that. We have identified the two academics and had conversations with them. I do not think that we have formally signed a service agreement.

Mr Neill: We have a couple of consultancy agreements to form with their respective universities before we can officially announce all the details. We can write to the Committee and confirm that at a later stage. We have had very good conversations with those academics informally, and they have agreed in principle. It is just a case of crossing a few t's and dotting some i's with their employers. They are very eager to participate.

Mr McAvoy: The costs are modest. You might say, "Michael, what is modest? That is a very nebulous term". We are not talking about tens of thousands of pounds; we are talking about single-figure thousands. The academics are being retained to provide expertise. They are based in Scotland and England. One has done a lot of work with the Department in Dublin. They are available to us for meetings to provide assistance. When we identify a cohort, we can have a conversation with them, because they are experts in the field and have seen this work elsewhere. They bring information to us. They sit across our plans and are happy with our rolling those out. They provide a degree of independence and an independent overview. I do not want to characterise their contribution as being to second-guess the Department, but we would not mind that, because we want to get it right. A lot of eyes are on the public-sector transformation fund. The money was hard fought for, and we want to make a success of it. The academics will be available to provide evidence to the transformaion board, as they sit across the work that we do.

Ms Sheerin: No problem. Thank you.

Mr Bradley: Thanks for your presentation. Congratulations on a smooth transition. GPS will enhance the service that you provide. Will that come at a cost, or will you be able to tap into the existing electronics? I also want to ask whether you were given any testing kit — perhaps a bottle of gin and some tonic — to take the heat off? [Laughter.]

Disregard that one.

Mr McAvoy: Sorry, I am just thinking of gin and tonic now. I must turn to your original question.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): There are other products. Perhaps a Bushmills. [Laughter.]

Mr McAvoy: Maurice, when we are in a position to use and avail ourselves of the technology that Buddi can provide to us, there will be a unit cost. As Matt described, there is a fixed cost and a variable cost in the contract. The variable cost relates to the number of installations and deinstallations. Take the scenario where we use GPS as an additional function and it became the norm further down the line. If we were to do 200 or 250 of those per month, there would be a unit cost to them. Therefore, the overall variable cost in the contract will increase over time. We have been aware of that, but the benefits and value for money that that provides for the criminal justice system in public protection and rehabilitation have already been accepted.

I do not want to make the obvious point about saving money that would otherwise be spent on prison, but that is a potential component. We might be able to work out the benefit of someone not being in custody and, instead, being managed safely in the community. There will be an increase in the cost of electronic monitoring to the Department over time as we avail ourselves of GPS technology and start to use those tags. Buddi will charge us for that functionality. That is what we expect to happen. If it happens, that is a sign of success, because we will be getting all that additional functionality, compared with the relatively rudimentary electronic monitoring system that we have at the moment.

Mr Neill: That is exactly right. In having the service available, the electronic monitoring service as a whole is largely where the fixed costs are. I mentioned the variable bill. You can think of one as your line rental and one as the minutes that you use. It will take a lot more resource to monitor someone 24/7 on a GPS tag than to have someone on a curfew tag with specific conditions. There is a commensurate increase in the resource. However, the benefits of that for risk management may equate to savings elsewhere in the system. We will need to bottom some of that out in the longer term, but having a GPS tag available is built into the contract. A tag is a tag almost, whether it is a GPS or RF tag. It is the daily monitoring charges per person that change. There will be modest increases in the monitoring costs, but those could be balanced against the risk management that is being deployed and the potential savings elsewhere in the justice system because there is no physical monitoring. The technological element may take away the need to use front-line staffing resource on this, and allow those staff to deal with issues and the evidence that is presented to them, as opposed to them having to formally investigate that.

Mr Bradley: It is an excellent idea. My daughter stuck some thing on my phone whereby she knows where I am 24 hours a day, seven days a week: so, yes, it works.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): It is the same thing — and you are free.

Mr McGlone: Thank you for your presentation. It raises some interesting elements. I will contextualise where I am going. Often — thankfully not that often — a victim finds out that, unbeknownst to them, a serious offender has been released from prison. I am thinking of serious offenders such as stalkers or paedophiles — people who could present a very serious risk of reoffending — being released from prison and tagged. To my mind, that is where GPS would be a significant factor, at the direction of a court or through whatever methodology we would use for that. If those people are out and have a GPS tagging device on them, and the alert shows that they are somewhere where they certainly should not be — it could be a convicted paedophile outside a school or, worse, an offender outside the home of their victim, with that victim knowing that he is within 10 or 15 yards of their home — that would raise all sorts of concerns. In circumstances where there is perceived or actual very high risk to the victim, what happens if a GPS alert goes off to indicate that that guy is nowhere near where he should be and it is a case of red alert? A process has to be followed, but, by the time that paperwork goes through, it could be the next day or the day after that. Could you talk me through how such red-alert cases would be dealt with and attended to?

Mr McAvoy: I could paint a picture of a couple of scenarios. I will take a simple one first: co-accused who are not allowed to fraternise with one another. If both of them are on a tag and are not allowed to meet, an alert can ping if they are within, say, 300 metres of one another, perhaps inadvertently. If that happens, they are both required to turn around and go in the opposite direction from which they came, and then they will no longer be at risk of inadvertently coming into contact with one another in breach of their licence condition. In the here and now, if there is a similar licence condition involving co-accused, the only evidence that we would have that they were together is if they were witnessed by a police officer or caught on a body-worn camera. It would require an awful lot of surveillance to capture that. That is a solution. I mentioned stalking, and we will have a conversation with people who have been victims of stalking. A number of people have said that they will happily chat with us about the reassurances that they could be provided with, as opposed to a simple licence condition that someone is not allowed to go within a certain distance of their former known address or former work premises. The responsiveness to that, Patsy, depends on the risk profile of the offender. As I say, it is not 'The Truman Show'. We are not painting a picture that a red light goes off in Tennent Street police station and someone immediately responds. It depends on the risk profile of the offender.

Mr McGlone: That is exactly the scenario that I am trying to portray: if a high-risk offender is out of prison and has a GPS tag on them, what happens? What if that is a high-risk offender who has committed a serious offence and they are out of prison and within 10 or 15 yards of their victim's home? They are at a specific address; they are not at the pub down the street or anywhere else but at that specific address. I am thinking of reassurance for the victim.

Is there a way of dealing with a situation where a person, who may be tagged, has been discharged from prison unbeknownst to the victim, who is very afraid? What alert goes off, and, if it is high risk or potentially high risk, how is that dealt with?

Mr McAvoy: Those sorts of scenarios are the reason why we made the bid to put together a multidisciplinary team. Police colleagues need to chat to us, because we do not want to create unrealistic expectations. We want to manage those appropriately. We need to walk through the very scenario that you have outlined, Patsy, to figure out what we could do and what the response would be. The best way to do that is through worked examples. Northern Ireland is a village. A person who has been convicted of paedophilia in Coleraine, for example, will typically return to Coleraine. I know of scenarios where people have gone to a GP surgery and met their offender.

Mr McGlone: I am not talking about that type of scenario, Michael, with the greatest respect.

Mr McAvoy: I know.

Mr McGlone: I am talking about the scenario where they are somewhere where they specifically and most definitely should not be.

Mr McAvoy: Patsy, you mentioned their being in breach of a licence condition: for example, they are not allowed to enter Larne, and they enter Larne.

Mr McGlone: No. You are way off on a different theme there. Can we stay focused on cases where a person has been discharged from prison, and the victim does not know anything about their being discharged? Say a person, who has been convicted of a serious stalking offence and is a high-risk offender, goes to whatever the address is and stands 20 yards away from it at night. There is a mechanism through GPS tracking that will show that that person is standing in the dark outside an address that he should be nowhere near. If the person in the house does not even know that he has been discharged or released from prison, albeit with a tag, that mechanism needs to be fixed. If you have not thought about that, you really need to think about it. It will not happen in every case, but, if high-risk offenders are released from prison, as has happened, and there is potential for an instance of high risk, as determined by you or in conjunction with the courts or whoever, that mechanism could work to address that, but it is a matter of making it work to assure the general public.

Mr McAvoy: In that specific situation, there are a couple of things that you could do. You could alert the victim to the fact that someone has entered a zone that they are not supposed to be in. If they are not supposed to be within a mile of a known address, you could alert the victim and dispatch a police car to the area to apprehend the individual. The specificity of GPS tagging means that you have a chance of discovering them in the vicinity. By the time you get there, they may have moved half a mile or driven out of the area, but you will have the breach to act on.

Mr McGlone: You know that they have been there.

Mr McAvoy: Yes. You could also alert the victim. Having the potential to do that is a better scenario to be in. If a condition of the licence is that they are not allowed to be within a certain distance of the victim's home, there is a mechanism to alert that victim of such a breach. That is exactly the sort of example that we are looking to think our way through. Again, it is about managing people's expectations to make sure that we do not overpromise and under-deliver on the response if such a scenario plays out.

Mr McGlone: OK. Thank you.

Mr Neill: For a bit of additional information, my understanding is that the police have, for example, service instructions in how they deal with a breach of bail. There is a graduated approach based on the police's operational consideration of such cases. By having an embedded police officer working directly with us on this project, I expect that we will have a subset or document to cover a scenario where a red or amber alert goes off and that says what happens next. The operational response to deal with the issue and safeguard a victim is absolutely on our agenda and radar. There are some operational considerations. How do the police see such an alert at the minute? Is it treated in the same way as a 999 call, or is the response a bit more graduated? About 10% of our cohort are on probation, so what does the Probation Board need to do when it receives such an alert? Does it contact the police? Does it contact the registered victim, if there is one? Is it able to take any additional steps? Again, we will have an embedded probation manager to help develop those processes.

Mr McGlone: If that happens late at night, as it probably will, the probation officer who deals with the case will probably not be available.

It goes back to how you work through the information mechanisms. It might not be the right call to ring the victim to say, "That guy's outside your house". Do you get me?

Mr Neill: Absolutely. A range of responses are used by other jurisdictions if they do not have 24/7 probation cover. Again, we will have to explore those. My understanding is that the two or three practices that I have talked with have a response plan for almost every individual: the, "What if?" and, "What do you do?" is all worked out before the person is even on the tag. You do not have to start thinking about what you need to do; you already know that, in scenario A, you do this; and, in scenario B, you do that. I am very attracted to that idea, but we need to develop it with operational colleagues.

Mr McGlone: OK. Thanks.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): We have no more questions from the Floor. Thank you very much, again, for your attendance, Michael and Matthew. It is a fascinating subject and one that we will keep an eye on.

Mr McAvoy: Thank you.

Mr Neill: Thanks, Chair.