Ms Caron McCaffrey:

With the advent of Covid-19 and the closure of our schools, in-cell learning which was something we had aspired to became much more important as a service for us and for the people in our care. We have developed a television channel where material can be played. We have not yet seen the full benefit. The ETBs have done a great deal of work. As Mr. O'Connor mentioned there are 150 courses that can be delivered through the television channel with an accompanying booklet. We are working very hard over the summer months to get that up and running. It is not to replace the work that happens in our school but to augment it.

There are also harder-to-reach populations. I always say that 45% of people come to school, they have taken that step, have been hooked in and are engaging in education. We would like to get to the other 55% of the population. By the television channel the reach of the school becomes broader. We can open education up to even more people within the prison. It is the route out of poverty for many people, as the Deputy said. It gives people a great chance of employment when they leave prison. From a higher education perspective we have also been successful in recent years with working with some third level institutions. Munster Technological University, UCC and Maynooth University have been to the forefront of working with us and the ETBs to allow people in custody who are engaging in education to see a pathway for themselves into third level education. In many of those cases lecturers and students from those institutions are coming into our prisons and are having classes co-delivered with people in the education units. That is also really transformative, allowing people in custody to see that actually third level education is a pathway for them to take.

It involves a great deal of work to make the transition from custody into third level education more seamless. I might have mentioned the pop-up restaurant we had in Cork Prison recently. That was extremely successful. That was a course specifically developed by Munster Technology University to be delivered to people in the school in Cork. Some of those participants have since left prison and they went straight into employment. Much more can be done to access third level education and employment opportunities. There is a particular focus in Cork on linking students in with employers and not only third level education opportunities on release. That is very important from all our perspectives.