Fr. Gerry McFlynn:

Yes. I have met people who were given a two-year tariff and ten years later they were still in prison. To take that example, after two years the parole board would meet and decide on the single criterion of risk, or whether the prisoner poses a risk to him- or herself or the public. Beyond that there is no interest, and the board would not even be interested in what else the prisoner has done for a number of years, except if he or she has been doing courses. Many of the prisoners are in prisons where the courses required by the parole board are unavailable. They must move around prisons, which lengthens the process.

I was asked whether we put any pressure on the British authorities, but there is no point in doing so because they have made it very clear to me, and the first secretary at the Irish Embassy in London, that when the imprisonment for public protection sentence was abolished in December 2012, the process would not be retrospective. When I asked the obvious question about what would happen to people serving a sentence, I was told very clearly by the senior official in the British Home Office that they would be the responsibility of the parole board, which is what I feared would happen. These prisoners will have to satisfy the parole board with a view to getting released, which can take a very long time.