Mr. Aaron O'Connell:

The situation in Cork has improved since that service has been in place. It has allowed pre-planning to take place in terms of discharges. The difficulty we have seen when people are discharged is that there is no housing to go to and in some cases, people are back into emergency accommodation. If somebody who has made an attempt within the prison - this goes for treatment centres as well - with all the effort, energy and resources that go to support him or her in doing that, is decanted to a site where somebody may be using drugs, it militates against the person's chances of recovery and continuing the recovery programme. When we look at how we discharge people, we really need to look at to where we discharge them and what the best options are so we must look for dry options as well. Part of the problem here is that the services that take people when they are decanted from prisons are stretched to the limits so they do not have the options or resources to innovate and develop because that all takes more resources than they already have. This stretch is impacting on the very people we should be trying to support to move on with recovery. In real terms, we are actually wasting resources on one level so we need to join all those dots.