Ms Caron McCaffrey:

The Irish Prison Service has its own college. It is located on our campus in the midlands, so it is adjacent to both the Midlands Prison and Portlaoise Prison. We provide training to recruit prison officers. Last year, we recruited 182 new recruit officers to our service. This year, we plan to recruit approximately 200 recruit officers. The training is done between our college and Waterford Institute of Technology. Our staff get a formal qualification - the higher certificate in custodial care - from a third level institute.