Blanchardstown Community Website

Blanchardstown Offenders New Directions — BOND

The Blanchardstown Offenders for New Directions (BOND) Project was launched by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr John O'Donoghue, T.D. on December 5th, 2000 at Coolmine Industrial Estate.

Speaking at the launch, the Minister said that the focus of the project is to target young people released from custody, those already involved in offending, and those who have the potential to become involved in offending.

"By targeting repeat offenders, the project will offer a community response which will contribute significantly to the rehabilitation of the young people and reduce their rate of re-offending", he said.

The Minister announced that the Department was "providing funding of £227,000 over the next three years towards the running costs of the project on a day to day basis."

The BOND Project successfully applied to the CAIT Initiative for funding to equip a state of the art computer room with the very latest computer equipment.

BOND is now in a position to offer a comprehensive range of accredited course such as NCVA and ECDL. In addition, they offer the latest software packages for literacy, numeracy and voice type dictation programmes for people with specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia. The facility was fully equipped in January 2002.