This report demonstrates our continued commitment to upholding human rights within our organisation and beyond. We recognise that upholding human rights is not just a matter of compliance, but one of our organisations fundamental responsibilities. Over the course of 2023, An Garda Síochána continued to progress the actions of the Human Rights Strategy 2022-2024, embedding human rights across our organisation through training, operations and through refining our policies and procedures, thereby ensuring that human rights is at the centre of all our decision making. I would like to thank all Garda personnel for their ongoing support and engagement in this critical endeavour.

P.8 Community Access Support Teams (CAST) Project  - The SHRAC received a presentation on the Community Access Support Teams (CAST) pilot project, which aims for Gardaí to work with mental health professionals across the HSE to provide a rapid and integrated 24/7 response to persons experiencing a mental health crisis. Much of the daily work of Gardaí is concerned with non-crime related activity such as preventing harm coming to people with addiction or mental health conditions and resolving issues for those who are homeless, the elderly, children and others at risk. It was explained that at the core of CAST is a desire to explore, identify and operationalise alternatives to detaining vulnerable persons and to enhance assessments and nonconditional referrals that are more aligned to the community healthcare model. This would allow for interventions to be made at the points of arrest, detention, charge, prosecution, trial and sentencing, which would permit alternatives to criminalisation and incarceration to be considered in the appropriate circumstances. The following three-tier model is proposed within the CAST Project: (i) (ii) (iii) A call-handling service A co-response team A community response hub, which is a collaboration between the key agencies in the region. The Limerick based CAST pilot is currently under development and aims to not only help individuals in crisis, but all agencies involved.