Mr. Stephen O'Connor:

We have noticed that many people are still presenting in our centres with literacy issues. It is difficult to come up with a panacea. The reasons people are not able to read and write when they get to the end of compulsory education can be many and varied. There is no single cause. Assessing that can be quite a challenge. A number of years ago, before the pandemic, I made a request to repeat the 2003 adult literacy survey in respect of prisoners. The original survey was conducted by Mark Morgan and Mary Kett. We put out a tender for people to conduct that survey but were unsuccessful. Covid then came along. It is something we are going to pick up again. We are only just getting back on our feet in the education service. That is something I would dearly like to see repeated and for us to have another go at.