Mr. Eddie Mullins:

I am so long in the Prison Service that I am now seeing the children of people who were in prison when I first joined. Imprisonment is generational. There is no question about it. When they see me, a significant number of people coming into prison now will talk to me instead of the people they are visiting because they remember me from 20 years ago. That is the reality.

We cannot put prisoners into a one-size-fits-all category. There is a large number of people in prison who have no interest in rehabilitation because they make a significant amount of money out of criminal behaviour. They prey on other people in prison. It is like business leaders and followers in the community. We have leaders who are making money out of criminal behaviour. They come into prison, are happy to serve whatever sentence they get and then resume their criminality activities when they get out.

I referred to drug-related intimidation. I can think of an incident - I mentioned it to Deputy Carroll MacNeill yesterday - whereby a lady contacted me some time ago. Her son had been assaulted in one of our exercise yards. She was disturbed by the fact that he had been assaulted and wanted to know why we had not informed her first hand. We explained that he was a grown man, it had not been a life and death situation and our procedure was not to contact family members unless it was. When I had the opportunity to ask the lady why she thought he had been assaulted, she said that it was because he had amassed a drug debt of approximately €6,000. She was approached in the community and told that she had to pay the €6,000 or, if she did not, he would be killed the next time. She went to a moneylender and borrowed the €6,000. I asked her how she was paying the money back. She said "the girls", whom I assumed were her daughters, and herself met the moneylender every week and paid a certain amount back.

She was told all of this outside the school her grandchildren attended. She stopped bringing the grandchildren to school because she was afraid she would be attacked outside it. That one drug debt affected three generations. The man in prison was safe in prison but the grandmother, grandchildren and daughters were paying that drug debt.

This is a systemic problem in the community. There is a great deal of drug intimidation and violence against family members. There is a fear among families to report it to the Garda because they feel they are being watched and followed. It is another aspect of criminal behaviour and activity and how they affect not just the person in prison, but also the wider family and community.