Ms Saoirse Brady:

My colleague will come in if there is anything else to add. On the education piece, we often hear that people on short-term sentences cannot really engage with education. When we look at the prison population and how many of them are in for 12 months or less, that is quite concerning. We need to find a way to ensure they are engaged. If such people were serving their sentence in the community, that would probably be a better use of resources and we would not really have to worry about this issue. However, that is not necessarily being dealt with in this legislation

Regarding head 12, the director general having research and development within his or her functions is something that could be looked at.

Regarding the board and the finance and governance piece, our understanding of it is that it looks like it is more of an advisory board. If we want to set up something on an independent footing, then transparency and accountability are important, so governance and finance oversight should be put in place. We also talked in our submission about the expertise of the board. We would hope somebody with human rights experience or expertise would be on the board.

The lived experience piece is tricky but there is a way to get around it for the charities legislation. You can go to the High Court and get a dispensation. This is certainly something that should be looked at. Even if somebody cannot serve on the board, there should be an advisory committee of some sort where people with lived experience are feeding in. There has to be something there.