Mr. Peter Bunting:

That is okay. I retired last week. Deputy Ó Cuív is right and he expressed our frustration as well. It is a fact that there are complex issues surrounding this. As Deputy Ó Cuív said, on high the staff can all be lovely people but the ground staff do not implement it. Sometimes it must be said that if one is in charge of an organisation, there are occasions within the dissident body when that must be dealt with and when that nettle must be grasped.

We cannot allow a small group of people to frustrate the political mechanisms or the rights mechanisms in terms of how prisoners should be treated. It is not compatible with what we need in our society. The Roe House prisoners have a sense of discipline because they come from an alleged military background. In our association with the INLA, they stood by their word on every occasion during the two-year process of decommissioning, but if you were to read the press about the INLA, you would not believe it.

The proposed meeting should be a joint one because everywhere one goes somebody keeps passing the buck. The Minister for Justice passes it to the Northern Ireland Office, NIO, and it passes to the HMIP and ones goes around on an never-ending circle. It is like a circus where the hamster is running around on the wheel. One would never get them all in the one room at the same time.

The issue of being out on licenceis a matter for Mr. John Finucane to address. I am not a legal person. There should be an open and transparent appeal mechanism against it and not a secret group of commissioners somewhere who can say one is not allowed to say this or to say that. Again, that is a breach of rights. It is a breach with respect to what we are all looking forward to having in society in terms of an open environment. Such secrecy hides corruption and other elements associated with it.

What was said about Portlaoise Prison is right. I am always amazed by what I see there. I was on one of the big landings there and at the end of it there was a big display of saws, chisels and hammers, which was the total the opposite of what would expect to find there. Yet everyone had the trust that no prisoner would take any of those tools down and attempt to attack a prison officer. They were all on display and everyone there was working away doing crafts. In Maghaberry, one is lucky if one is allowed to have matchsticks and a tiny knife to do some craftwork. What is found in the two of them is very contradictory and quite opposite in many ways. I know Deputy Ó Cuív mentioned that fact that his grandfather had a wonderful escape from the old practice of having a file in a cake; he did not have a great record sometimes with the prisoners.