Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One of the groups that looks after those people, which is funded through the Department of Health, is community prison link workers, who are very good. I have worked with a number of them over the years. They put things in place, including some very basic things. For example, they ensure that when people leave prison, they have a payment when they get out, and are ready to access payments and so on, or they have somewhere to go or a family member they can link in with. Those kind of small links make a big difference when somebody leaves prison. I heard stories at the IPRT presentation of people leaving prison with a bag and not even a bus fare in their pocket, with nowhere to go and not knowing where they were going. The likelihood of them reoffending is a lot lower if they had things in place. That is worth looking into.