Mr. Fergal Black:

I would like to give one illustration. On the prisoner channel, which is very new and came about as a result of Covid-19, a foundation stone of our first prison mental health week in all the prisons this week has been the involvement of The Two Norries, two former offenders from Cork, who the committee is probably familiar with. Dr. Regan worked with them when they were in prison, and they have now come back as people with lived experience, who have turned a corner and who are in employment. This week, they are attending every prison to give talks to prisoners.

Dr. Regan spoke to them the other night. They engaged one man at one of the talks in a prison earlier this week who told them he was in a segregation unit, and that he was causing trouble. Their podcast, which is now on our prisoner channel, was a bit of a lightbulb moment for him. He got out of where he was, and the difficulties he was involved in. He is now back in the general prison population, and he came up to them after their talk and said that that was something. It is about the reach that something like the prisoner channel can have. We are really strong this year in developing the whole lived experience piece, because we have come through our involvement with the Samaritans, and our involvement with 1,500 volunteers now trained through the Red Cross. It is that peer-led thing and this is a further advance on it, where we are bringing in people who have walked the walk, talked the talk, turned their lives around, and who prisoners will listen to.

Perhaps Dr. Regan wants to add to this, as she brought The Two Norries in.