Mr. Karl Dalton:

I will come in on education and training and the workshops being closed. First, we have what is called a regime management plan, on which we have engaged with the Irish Prison Service. It is for safe systems of work for staff when there are the inevitable shortcomings in the staffing of areas. One of the first priorities is that structured activity should be protected. In other words, we maintain the structured activity first and try to get as many people as possible. A simple way of explaining that is if someone is going to school every day and we have staff shortages, we change the programme and while they might only get a half-day, we continue to make sure they have structured activities. From our perspective, prisoners who engage in structured activities are far less likely to injure one another or injure staff. In the national and regional pay agreements, we enshrined the regime management plan for safe systems of work. Again, you would have to go into that and look at the priorities, but the first priority is structured activity, such as the schools and workshops. When prison officers take prisoners into the workshops, there is less trouble in the prison, it is a happier environment and the prisoners are more content.

This again ties in with the point that the services lead into the behaviour, the behavioural pattern leads into the incentivised regime, and the incentivised regime leads into the ability to get temporary release and to have a constructive time in prison, leading to release at the right time.