Mr. Brian Dack:

With regard to community service, there are certain realities relating to critical mass and what services we can provide. We have community service available nationally in every county. There are certain particular types of projects in which we can excel and bring them forward in areas where there are larger populations. In Dublin and Cork, we have a graffiti removal project that we operate in tandem with local authorities, targeting different hot spots in order to clear the graffiti. We are able to do that because we have mobile community service buses manned by community service supervisors with a team of individuals sentenced to complete community service. It is not something we can do in every county in the country but we have a variety of ways of operating. We have community service supervisors in every county and in some areas where we do not have community service projects based in schools, community centres or youth clubs, we have individual placements in host agencies where we have negotiated and agreed they would undertake supervision with support from ourselves and constant monitoring. To answer the Deputy's question, the service is available nationally.

We have had a presence in prisons since 1960, when the chaplains and ourselves were the only services of a helping nature there. The environment has changed greatly since, as I am sure the Deputy is aware, and we have changed accordingly. We work with prisoners throughout their sentence in terms of the amelioration of the worst excesses of the prison environment, helping people cope while in prison and supporting families. Our focus is towards the latter end and the preparation of people for integration into the community. That is where the majority of our work exists. As Mr. Geiran highlighted earlier, there is a number of people in the system with post-release supervision orders from the courts and they are our primary focus. That is not to say we would not work with prisoners during the course of their sentences who do not have post-release supervision.