Ms Anne Costello:

I thank the Chairman and everyone very much for attending. With regard to what Ms Doyle said about racism training and so forth, training works with some people. Certainly, our inputs to the probation staff worked very well. We had people who were coming from that frame of mind who were open to it. I think with other people and staff in other organisations where there are deeply embedded racist attitudes, the only response is zero tolerance. The prison is a very hierarchical organisation. It needs to come from the very top that there will be consequences for racist behaviour. That is where we will see real change.

On a more positive note, again, some of our initiatives have worked really well. That is something about which the attendees have all spoken today. Many of them have worked so well because we have champions in the various organisation who are driving it forward. That is really great but the danger is that we rely on individuals and when they move on, the work gets set back again. Therefore, we need to mainstream it. We need to embed the initiatives we started now. And when we have shown that they work in different particular prisons, we need to roll it out across the other prisons and use the learning from that.

Finally, we need to work more closely with the committee to scrutinise the data. Travellers are very reluctant to identify as Travellers because, in the past, their identity has been used against them. They are being encouraged now to come forward and identify as Travellers. In Michael Donovan's time, he assured Travellers that there would be benefits for them and extra resources, workshops, etc., and for those reasons, they did identify. We need to continue that. We need to show the people who are asking the questions that there are benefits for them in identifying as Travellers because there will be changes in how services are delivered. There is loads more I want to say but I will finish there.