Ms Caron McCaffrey:

I am sorry for the delay in replying. There were two elements to the question. There is the prison shop and then there are our staff canteen arrangements. Procurement for the prison shop is done by the Irish Prison Service and the funds are managed by it. We reinvest the profits from the tuck shop into a prisoner assist programme fund which we then use to make hardship payments to prisoners. We also use some of that profit to fund the community return scheme which allows prisoners to go out early onto community service.

The mess committees are separate and they manage their moneys themselves. They are aware of the principles of good governance, notwithstanding the fact that they are not part of our voted expenditure. As part of our business process review, when we were looking at cash management and handling within the Prison Service, we thought it was an opportunity for us to engage with those committees to ensure that they did have the appropriate financial arrangements in place, but those arrangements are a matter for the mess committees themselves as opposed to the Prison Service.