Mr. Fergal Black:

On recruitment, we have a number of professional grades and Dr. Regan has articulated the issues in respect of psychology but there also are prison doctors and nurses and as with all other public agencies, it is a challenge. Ten years ago, I would have told the committee it was a problem of money. That is not the case now, we have the money. We have successfully recruited a number of prison doctors over the past three years. We have another competition just about to start. We have had to move with the times. We ran a competition in January that closed two weeks ago. I was on the interview board last week and this week and we sent our offers at the end of last week because we realised that nurses who are available are not going to wait for six months. We closed the competition on Saturday. We started interviews on Tuesday, with further interviews the following Monday. We got results out after Monday of this week and that is in batch one. My point is, we are trying to be imaginative and trying to get people who show an interest in working in the Prison Service. It will be an ongoing challenge, however, to get professionals to join the service. As Dr. Regan and her colleagues are doing, going to recruitment fairs where psychology candidates from around the country, North and South can attend, is a good strategy. We will have a stand at Dublin City University, DCU, and that is the way we have to go because there is a perception that working in prisons is really dangerous. In actual fact, working in prisons where one has a prison officer in one's immediate location is probably safer than a number of primary care centres would have been when I used to work in the HSE. We need to get that message across.