Mr. Noel Waters:

May I add to that? The elimination of overcrowding and the annualised hours have greatly helped the Prison Service to have the resources available to do that type of work. Ten or 15 years ago that would have been unthinkable because the entire focus of the prison system was on managing as best it could the secure containment of large numbers of people in prison and with very little regard to dealing with other issues. The staff did what they had to do and primarily it was to ensure that people were kept in safe custody. There were a great many incapacities around the system but these are being addressed.

The idea that somebody would be released from prison into homelessness is automatically saying to him or her to go off and commit more crime. We simply have to break the cycle. We are involving other Departments across Government to see what we can do better around that type of system.