Ms Molly Joyce:

I am happy to give an initial viewpoint from the IPRT's perspective. All the issues the Deputy raised in respect of women in prison are matters of serious concern for the IPRT. They are a particularly vulnerable and at-risk group. In terms of what is better, the short answer is "not prison". They should not be sent to prison. We generally see, and I do not have exact statistics to hand, that women appear to be remanded into custody and sent to prison sometimes because of a misguided paternalistic view of the court. That is what I hear sometimes from lawyers, that judges think they will be safer if they are sent to prison than if they do not send them there. However, that is a failing of social policy, because there is nowhere else for them to go. The short answer is "somewhere else".

The Deputy mentioned open prisons. There are no open prisons for women in Ireland. That is a massive problem and it must be addressed. It is something that has been said for many years. We have an outlook programme now where women have a step-down facility, essentially, but the numbers available there do not appear to be as many as are needed.