Mr. Barry Owens:

I will mention a number of points that occurred to me after Deputy Ellis’s statements and questions.

One thing is that we should consider sentencing. Earlier in this discussion we talked about the many short-term sentences that Travellers serve. We have to be practical about what is possible within a short-term sentence. If people are serving a continuous sentence or a number of short ones, with not too much time in the community, then it is limited as to what can be achieved in a prison. It is a very disruptive kind of existence. As to the type of access to services, if somebody is serving a number of short-term sentences continually, what can be achieved by an education unit or by a service like ours is quite limited. This is especially the case if one thinks about something like literacy. It is hard to learn to read and write and we just forget about what it was like. This is probably a very difficult thing and probably takes a long time to do.

What is achievable? It suggests to me that prison should not be seen as separate but as a completely continuous mechanism between prison and community. What we do in prison needs to be reinforced in the community. Of all of the things mentioned today in Traveller supports, access to services is very important. There should be some plan which is not just about the prison but is shared with the community. This idea of shared plans, of people leaving prison and going to the community and vice versabecomes very important. It means that somebody else can take this up on the outside. We have a protocol referral agreement between ourselves and Intreo, for instance, and we are trying to standardise what we collect and what we share and how we share. This is a small thing but it is useful.

We have to think about what is possible in the time available to us and how this happens in terms of the rotation. We should be realistic about what is achievable for those people because to say that one should read and write also is perhaps to introduce too much to them. We should identify smaller milestones towards everything, such as employment, being literate and numerate, whatever the case may be. There are very interesting steps in the process which are valuable and if one recognises this in the person, one gets buy-in as one goes along.

Guidance is also an issue. Guidance for us in the linkage and gate services, in the first instance, opens up the space to imagine alternatives. It is often the first time that anybody has been asked what they want and what stands in their way. It is certainly not about being pushed down a particular way. Often, and this is true of the general prison population, it has very conservative or stereotyped types of ideas about progress and success, based upon their community, to which they might aspire.

You are working through all of that but for the gate service in the prisons, since this is what we are talking about, that space is opened up to an imagined alternative and then the question, and that is a pathway. The question then becomes how does one do it and what practical steps are necessary to achieve that.

It does work. There is one case of a person from the Traveller community who is now accessing Sligo IT and that was following a guidance process. That shows that it is possible but it just does not happen often enough.

On education units, based on my previous comments about the sentence link and so on, these are obviously central to the whole thing and of great importance. They do not, however, operate in a vacuum but are linked to the rest of the prison. They should be seen as the centre of the wheel on which there are spokes. We should all be feeding into education. There are so many opportunities and educational moments within prison that we need to share responsibility for. Guidance itself is an educational process, if one thinks about it, as somebody is exploring what is possible. It is so important because if one thinks about the future and one identifies something that animates the person and which that person thinks for the first time ever is possible, then that organises how he or she sees the present. It will in a way change that person’s perception, perhaps, about what he or she might think about addiction and support services, which the person may see differently in this case. This is something that we need to develop further but is possible.

There is a question about segregation which is a very difficult issue. I am not quite sure what the policy from the IPS is on segregation. I believe that some amount of self-segregation takes place which may be because of comfort; I am not quite sure. It seems to me that members of the Traveller community are mostly together in the prison which is something to be dealt with.

In the group work programme, one talks about creating a safe space in which members of the Traveller community might talk about things and this is something where we could provide an opportunity for Travellers to do that and at the same time not corral them into education settings, say, in a classroom just for Travellers or perhaps to channel ways down.

We need to get that balance between the things. Sometimes we need group work which is just for Travellers because there are issues that pertain to them and at other times general provision needs to be mixed for some things but we need to be clear about it.