Fr. Gerry McFlynn:

It is a difficult question. We always have our suspicions but that will be a bigger problem in the future for prisoners. From 1 April, legal aid will be withdrawn in the UK so prisoners will find it difficult to get legal aid to take cases. There are no outstanding cases such as the Birmingham Six or Guildford Four cases that we know about at the present time. Having said that, there are cases we have suspicions about from time to time.

With regard to the size of the population, Irish prisoners now constitute the second largest ethnic group in the prison system in England and Wales, marginally behind Polish prisoners. The figure is higher than what Joanna made it out to be. I visited a Birmingham prison two weeks ago and I found six prisoners who were not known to us. They were not on our database and that is just from one prison. The figure is probably a lot higher than we are saying.