Mr. Deaglán Ó Briain:

It is for the future. I have recently taken responsibility for this and Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, is really interested in the area. We are proposing a review of the work we are doing in the course of 2018. The focus is very much on outcomes. It is challenging in terms of articulating how those are measured but clearly recidivism is a particular issue.

We do quite well in international comparisons. I do not have the precise figures before me, but the overall recidivism rate in terms of people coming back to projects is about 17%. There is a particular issue with burglary, so there is work to be done. The review of strategy and how the projects operate will take place in 2018, which the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, announced at a recent event.

On the Irish Prison Service, clearly the system is cumbersome but I would not wish to give the impression that there has been an underspend on the Irish Prison Service initiatives. Taking the plans for 2014 and 2016 together, an allocation was committed from Dormant Accounts Fund of approximately €579,000. All that was spent in the 2015 to 2017 period. From our perspective, it is about the sequencing of approval and then the expenditure. There is an issue about alignment with the annual estimates process and the Dormant Accounts Fund but there is not an underspend.