Ms Pauline McCabe:

On the question of whether I have made a recommendation, I will go back a step. Prison service rules provide that sometimes there is cellular confinement as a punishment. There now are much stricter rules on how long people should be confined and on what facilities to which they will have access. These rules have changed significantly over time in respect of what this actually means. Members should remember that I am complaint-driven and in each case I get, I look at it, at the regime and the circumstances and I constantly make constructive recommendations on how the individual circumstances of the particular case can be addressed. I could not possibly make a recommendation stating there should never be cellular confinement because as I noted, there will be circumstances in which that simply could not be delivered in the context of protecting an individual.