Mr. Stephen O'Connor:

The external model has been one of the great successes of policy in respect of prisons over the last 30 to 40 years. It has allowed us to tap into all of those educational services that are available to the community.

Providing education of a standard commensurate with that which exists in the community is a key objective of the Irish Prison Service. We look at a particular place's facilities and, while, for security reasons, we do not provide those facilities exactly as they would be outside, there is no question that we work to make it work. That is what we do; it is not about having everything be perfect.

We had a visit just four weeks ago from a group of Norwegian prison educators. They came to look at one of our programmes in Mountjoy Prison relating to community philosophy. They want to roll this out in Norwegian prisons. We have strong links with the Scandinavians. Their prison policy has enlightened views on imprisonment. I have visited some prisons there, including Halden Prison in Norway. It would be hard to see it as being a prison when one visits it, yet some of the highest security prisoners in Norway are housed there. It has the most remarkably humane facilities. We do not have the resources or the oil dollars of the Norwegians, but we try to compensate for that with how we treat people. I have noticed a significant improvement over the years I have spent working at prisons. When I first came to work at prisons, many years ago, there was a debate about whether we could have in-cell sanitation. Today, the debate is about whether we can have in-cell education. That is maybe a reason for hope.

We would like to borrow many ideas from systems around the world. Preparing people for the world of work is one area we can do better in by making the connection between education, training and work. We have become involved in barista training in the progression unit and Dóchas Centre. That is a new initiative for us. I thank the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, CDETB, for funding that through its continuing professional development programme. We get significant support from ETBs all around the country. We can borrow from other jurisdictions. We use the Erasmus projects to do that. One year, there were approximately 60 Norwegian prison educators here to look at what we were doing. We built personal friendships with them. We want to see that develop and prosper in the coming years.