Mr. Brian Dack:

Under an initiative we have with the Prison Service, the community return programme, people emerging from prison at a halfway point in their sentence, having been carefully selected through a series of processes, work on community service sites alongside people doing community service. That programme has proven to be extremely successful. I am sure it was mentioned earlier. I refer to the experience of having a working day, being trained, supervised and having a good relationship with the community service supervisors, who are critical to the work we do on pro-social modelling and giving a lead to the people they are working with, and to the sense of well-being participants get from giving back to communities. We frequently find that when people have finished their sentence and paid their dues, they still want to stay on because it is a meaningful activity for them.

We also ask the training and employment officers to do a couple of sessions with every person on the system so that they have the opportunity to continue with the training employment officers who link with the Department of Social Protection to explore pathways into employment. We are positive and hopeful of employment becoming more available. We did a small survey recently on our Dublin sites and we found very good figures for people finding employment and moving on. Some good green shoots are being seen.