Mr. Aaron O'Connell:

One of the key aspects is the assessment that is done with the person. Some of that should follow a person into the prison but there must be an understanding and an awareness of the people working with persons who have addictions who end up in the prison system as to what they are actually dealing with. They need to be supported and trained in terms of those aspects. The emphasis must be on the rehabilitation side. We should normalise whatever we can within the system. For example, in terms of prison for women, there should be a collection of houses. It should be normalised. The incentives in place for people to address some of the issues depend on their sense of what they would like to do and then facilitating them to do that. We need a comprehensive programme in terms of understanding where the person is coming from. We should assess the needs and consider how we can develop those within the prison. If that cannot be done we should consider if it can be pushed on somewhere else such as a step down facility or whatever the case may be but we should have a programme that is comprehensive and that focuses specifically on the individual need.

Everybody is different. An important point about any system is that we tend to work on the basis of collectives. The system needs to be individualised to the particular individuals because their circumstances, history, the trauma they have suffered and so forth all impacts on how they respond to services and supports. Key to that is that we do not ask people the same questions all the time. There is a system in place, certainly in Cork, where there is an integrated assessment that works from homeless services to addiction services because we are dealing with the same people. We need to work that into the prison system as well to ensure we are not duplicating stuff and asking people the same questions. With regard to the supports people need in terms of their mental health and so forth, we must ensure they are clearly delineated in terms of who is providing them and also the connections and the hand over when somebody comes back out into the community. They are key aspects.

Stability and continuity across the supports we are delivering, and consistency across the delivery programmes, are very important but the housing option has to be the major support element. When somebody comes out of prison, we need to offer them housing of some sort. We have to integrate the housing programmes with all that as well. On the type of options, everybody is different. In the past we always built for the family unit. We need to consider building one, two and three bedroom houses to reflect where people are at a particular time and to allow them have lifelong adaptability where they can move within communities. We must always make sure those supports are in place.