Ms Maureen Mulligan:

I will give one example. One prisoner with whom we worked in the Irish prisons under a court order was referred to me by his doctor. He had had 150 pervious charges. His father had been murdered and he came to us under a court order in 2006. He had had a history of drug and alcohol misuse and violent crime and, therefore, was a serious problem for the community. We were given a court order because there was nothing for him. He was out of control following the murder of his father. We agreed to undergo a pilot project for him in the prison and the judge said he would look at sentencing. We saw him for three months in the prison where I had a team. It was difficult work because it was a team of ten dealing with one prisoner. He has been involved in no further violent crime since. He is a deprived member of the community and has not completed his programme. We were there for three months and he was then released into our care and there were no issues or incidents with him. He was released back into care in Wicklow on condition that if there was a further incident, he would be looking at three years imprisonment, but there was not and, therefore, he was not imprisoned. However, this is not something we have the resources to facilitate. I have sent on some of the doctor's information on this young man.