Ms Deirdre Malone:

I was really struck by Dr. O'Sullivan's point about the importance of a role model who can be seen to succeed. Exactly the same thing applies in the prison system. The idea of peer-to-peer mentoring is so important. I was also struck by how often everyone in the room mentioned their memory of a programme or pilot that really worked, or a programme that was funded for six years. We need to look at data. We must find the evidence for what works and continue to fund it. Conversely, we must find the evidence for what does not work and stop funding it. We must stop reinventing the wheel every five or ten years. We must replicate the successful programmes.

My last point is in response to Deputy McLoughlin's question about how to deal with rehabilitated offenders. My answer would be that, in the same way we should stop calling schools "disadvantaged", we must stop calling them "rehabilitated offenders" and start calling them our students, our employees and our colleagues.