Mr. Tom Roberts:

I am sorry; I missed that question.

Both groupings were involved in drawing up the voluntary guidelines for employers. It is a process that has been ongoing since 1998. There is a working group of ex-prisoners that has been chaired by successive heads of the Northern Ireland civil service. I reluctantly agreed to support the voluntary guidelines because I believed legislation was necessary. We decided it to give it a fair wind and were led to believe the civil service would commit to implementing the voluntary guidelines. I think it actually went as far as stating it would penalise any contractor servicing it if it did not adopt them also. However, shortly after the voluntary guidelines were published, there was a question asked in the Assembly. The Minister for Finance and Personnel - it might have been Mr. Peter Robinson at the time - said the existing recruitment processes within the civil service were adequate and effectively nothing changed. In my view, the voluntary guidelines are dead in the water.

There is one other point. There is apathy among ex-prisoners on the issue of employment; they just say, "There is no point in applying for that job as I won't get it anyway." It is very difficult to research the issue of discrimination because people say it is just apathy. Many of the ex-prisoners were incarcerated in the 1970s and early 1980s; they are, therefore, thinking more about retirement rather than employment. There has also been no provision for retirement.