Mr. Peter Bunting:

I will attempt to address all those points. The first thing I would say is that it is fairly evident that there is, unfortunately, a problem with recruitment to the prison service because, unlike with the PSNI, there is no cross-community percentage requirements for prison officer grades. I know a young woman from the Nationalist community who has been subjected to a number of sectarian attacks by her colleagues. While I say that, I was very much engaged in getting separation in the prison initially in 2006 or 2007. It was primarily on behalf of the UDA, members of which were lobbying me. In case anyone thinks otherwise, regardless of where I come from, I look after everyone if I think it is in the best interests of society in Northern Ireland.

I agree with everything Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan said on education. It is crazy. The phrase about an idle mind and the devil utilising it comes to mind. There is no reason the prisoners in Roe House should not be the recipients of education. We all know that the republican tradition going back as far as history has always been that it is important that republican prisoners are educated. This helps with the reintegration into society when people leave prison. It is common sense so that we do not have recidivism, etc.

To be fair, one has to say that there has been a continuum of threats against prison officers from the outside on various websites. That should not be happening because it complicates matters.

I am not sure that I would agree with downsizing or limiting the number of staff, particularly as I represent the workers.

I will say one thing about political will. Under the leadership of the national chair of Sinn Féin, there has been huge movement with regard to synergies happening between, particularly, Roe 3 and Sinn Féin. Not only is that care or collegial action focused on republican prisoners, it is also focused on the general prison population as well. I see that as a significant movement by Sinn Féin towards a degree of sharing with, talking to and reintegrating with people who share the same tradition. I think that has benefited the entire process and also the process outside Northern Ireland. That is to be welcomed. The person involved in that - I will not mention his name - should be congratulated because the national chair of Sinn Féin has played a brilliant game there and that is helping Northern Ireland move forward.

In the context of other political groups, the SDLP was interested. In particular, Pat Ramsey from Derry, who is not an MLA any more, was terribly interested and was there regularly. Unfortunately, he is no longer in the Assembly. I do not know if anyone is there. If I can mention it, poor old Conal and I had the misfortune to appear before the Assembly committee on justice, which was chaired by a DUP member. I think the only members that were there were DUP members. They wondered how dare we speak to these people, that they should be shunned, they were lepers and we should not be going near them. We were considered two eejits. We might be eejits, by the way, but we were "well-meaning" eejits, in the words of some of the people there. We had a rough time. They could not get it through their heads that if our society is to progress and we are to embed the Good Friday Agreement to move forward with a peaceful and just society, we need to be dealing with prisoners.

If we are to move forward with a peaceful, just society we need to be dealing with prisoners - loyalist, dissident republican and the general population of prisoners - but it is just to no avail. The view seems to be that if hell is there, which they probably believe in, prisoners should be all put there right away. It is very frustrating, and they are very difficult people to deal with, not alone on this issue but on the rest of the social and economic issues in Northern Ireland. To attempt to get the DUP to engage with the trade union movement at times is very difficult. It is said that we are a pan-nationalist front or an all-island body and we should not exist in Northern Ireland or that we should be connected with the TUC or another such body. Those are problems for us as well on a broad front. I do not envy anybody who is trying to deal with them, but let us get back to the nitty-gritty things that happen every day. It is not my musical taste by the way, but imagine banning a CD of Foster and Allen going into a prison because of the bit of Irish music on it or censoring and prohibiting books on Irish history. We have regressed in relation to how prisons work and how people are treated in prison.

A fact that is now coming to light is that when people say they want to go into Roe House it is sometimes used against them in court, that because they asked to go into Roe House they are obviously guilty and they are republicans. It is quite right to say that people are left in there for ages, in what is called administrative detention. It is a nice phrase. People might wait two or three years to be tried, which is nonsense as well. It is a perversity of natural justice. Lots of things are difficult. I believe more prisoners have been let out on bail because there has been a huge decrease in the numbers. When we were there first there were 22, it peaked at 48 and then all of a sudden they started giving some of them bail. The reason for that is because they had no more room for prisoners so somebody came up with the idea of doing something about it for fear that they were building up trouble. That is more the reasoning for letting so many people out of jail, namely, to reduce the numbers and deal with the accommodation problems they had.