Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a supplementary question on the prisons. Deputy Martin Kenny was speaking about addiction services. Going back to the issue of women's prisons, I refer to Dóchas. Obviously, Limerick caters for people who have much longer sentences primarily, even from Dublin. In Dóchas, there is a particular concern that the bulk of people who are there are suffering from sexual trauma, addiction, mental health issues. Deputy Martin Kenny quite rightly highlighted that in many respect.

The new justice strategy which tries to minimise short sentences, I would suggest, is particularly important for woman who are in and out of Dóchas on very short sentences with the effect that there is no real opportunity in that context to have any addiction programme, any education programme, any mental health programme or any Rape Crisis Centre support, which, I note, is such an important part of the work in Limerick. I will use this opportunity to emphasise strongly that women, if they go into prison for two months, might lose their children, might lose their home, and would see everything is gone and nothing is fixed. There is an opportunity through the justice strategy to make it clear to the Judiciary that short sentences, in particular for women, are deeply inappropriate because there is no opportunity for them to get the sort of break from the difficulties that they might benefit from otherwise.