Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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At the start of the pandemic the prisons did very well in keeping Covid-19 out of the prisons, which are contained environments in which the virus could spread quite rapidly. That was good. One of the things the prisons relied on was isolation for vulnerable prisoners. It is important to try to minimise the amount of restricted time for prisoners. People were on 23-hours isolation or the like, and I understand the numbers have increased and that there are still people spending a long time in their cells. We must work to minimise that.

One of the other issues was the community prison link workers. These are community workers who would work on an outreach basis with people in prison to ensure they have links in their communities when they are released. They have two functions. One is supporting people in prison and the other is ensuring a smooth transition when they leave prison, which is incredibly important in terms of recidivism. However, some of these prison link workers were having trouble accessing the prisons, accessing video chat and even accessing telephone calls with prisoners. Prisoners could, of course, call them, but it would have taken up some of their family call time, as the prison link workers were having difficulty getting onto the list of approved professionals. This varied from prison to prison and depended, to a certain degree, on the relationship with the individual governors. It would be beneficial if we could ensure that NGOs, community supports and the like could be added either automatically or certainly much quicker, without necessarily being at the discretion of support from the Department, so prisoners can continue to access these vital services, even at a time when restrictions might be in place. It should not mean the prisoner making the choice as to whether he or she calls his or her family or uses that time to call a support worker. That should never have to be a choice for a prisoner.

Some of this worked itself out and much of it involved local individual solutions, but if the Department could ensure that community prison link workers are linking with the prisons, that could be very helpful.