Director of the Probation Service

Position description

The Director is responsible for the proper governance, strategic leadership and management of the Service. There is a current staff complement of over 520 and a current annual budget of €67 million.

Reporting to the Deputy Secretary, Criminal Justice, Department of Justice, Home Affairs & Migration, the role of Director is to lead and ensure the optimal performance of the Probation Service in keeping with its statutory function including ensuring operational efficiencies, quality service delivery while continually enhancing the capacity of the agency at all times.

Main Duties of the Job:

• Responsibility for strategic planning, governance, accountability, transparency, risk management and operational service delivery within a complex organisation, critically, ensuring the Probation Service operates as a central component of the criminal justice system in fulfilling its role;
• Leading in a high-pressure working environment in which there is keen political and media interest;
• Provide leadership, guidance and support for staff and ensure that standards of performance are maintained which are characterised by high-quality service, fairness and courtesy towards staff and clients alike;
• Oversee funding of over €21m to 56 community-based organisations who work with 4,500 clients to achieve its public safety aim. Services include offender management programmes addiction treatment, mental health, homelessness, education and training;
• Maintain efficient and effective management systems and practices across the Service, including human resources and financial management systems and ensure the provision of meaningful management information to the Minister sufficient to assess on-going performance of the Service in achieving its objectives;
• Lead the Probation Service Management Team in discharging all managerial functions relevant to effective and efficient delivery of services within the context of democratic political accountability structures. The successful candidate must be able to relate effectively to the key interests – Minister/Department, senior management, staff, trade unions, political, media etc. S/he will be required to maintain, keep under review and, where possible, enhance strategies for the efficient running of the system. S/he will provide high quality information to the Department within the deadlines set to enable a considered response to be made to Parliamentary Questions, Press Queries, Ministerial correspondence etc.;
• Formulate Strategy Statements and lead on implementation of Strategy Statements as agreed with the Minister;
• Leading on criminal justice policy as part of the Department’s strategic leadership team.

A full list of duties and eligibility criteria can be found in the Candidate information Booklet.

Information About the Organisation:

The Probation Service is an agency of the Department of Justice Home Affairs & Migration, and its functioning is pivotal to the workings of Ireland’s criminal justice system, with national responsibility to implement community based non-custodial sanctions, as imposed by the Criminal Courts, at all levels. It has 523 staff, based in 35 offices and 14 prisons. The staff consists mainly of Probation Officers and Senior Probation Officers (the majority of whom are professional grade), supported by administration staff. The Service provides probation supervision, community service, offending behaviour programmes and specialist support services to both adult and young offenders. It also provides a probation service to prisons and places of detention to rehabilitate offenders and facilitate prisoner re-integration. The Service has responsibility for the supervision each year of circa 20,000 offenders in the community nationally.

Application instructions

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