Ms Ita Burke:

We equally have very good information sharing protocols with our colleagues in the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. We have worked on this for several years. Where we are on the one island where there is movement of offenders, it is something we need to manage very carefully. Data protection brings new challenges but we are working on written agreements. As Mr. Gieran noted, the law enforcement directives give us authority on that. We do it in two particular areas. One is court reports, where we prepare reports for courts in the North andvice versa, where our colleagues in the Probation Board do it for courts in the South. We have an information sharing agreement where we can exchange those. If offenders are moving between both jurisdictions, we remain in close contact, particularly in the area of sex offenders where it is of critical importance.