Dr. Pauline Conroy:

There is a serious need for a separate translation service that could be established at a central level. It would run by telephone into the prisons, or even into other places within the criminal justice system. These telephone interpretations work very well and I have had involvement in them in England in the borough of Newham. The Irish Prison Service has an obligation to provide confidentiality and privacy to members who wish to speak not just to the visiting committee, but they may wish to speak to a chaplain or an emir as well. Such a service should be available to them. At the moment, other prisoners oblige by offering to translate but that is actually very wrong because you should not be disclosing personal information to another prisoner. It is quite wrong. The other prisoner could be of a religion or an ethnicity that is different from the prisoner who does not speak English. The translation issue is therefore crucial.