Ms Ann Marie Sweeney:

I thank the committee for inviting me to this meeting. I am here to speak on behalf of women in prison. As a mother and a lady who has been in prison, I see the challenges girls face in and out of prison.

I grew up as a Traveller in poverty with a lot of discrimination in a community that felt like it rejected me at the beginning. School was not much different, so my expectation of the outside world was that we were not good enough. It became the norm. They say racist words do not hurt, but when you are constantly being rejected and put down by a system and a community, it has an impact on you. It takes a lot of years for you to realise that. You think it is because of your upbringing or things around you. It is not, but it takes its toll, which grows with you.

My first crime was to survive. I was a mother when I was very young and I struggled because I was brought up with a mindset of not asking for help, not trusting people because they had always put us down and so on. There was that conflict within me. My first criminal act was to put food on the table for me. If I did not do that, there would have been times when life would have been much more difficult. I did not know the road it would take me down. As I went through life and had many struggles, I ended up in addiction. I had a serious car accident at the age of 20, which left me on heavy medication. That is where my road started. Shortly after, I did a couple of prison sentences. I was put into the prison system.

Addiction took its toll on me and my family, including my kids. I am six kids and a few sentences in the Dóchas Centre later. Although Dóchas was a chance for me to go in and refresh, I went in there with my six kids spread across Ireland with different family members who were trying to cope with the situation. I could only get to talk to one of those kids for a couple of minutes each day. I did not really know what was going on. That alone caused me worry and stress inside prison. The way I am as a mother, if I know the kids are all right, it gives me peace.

My mental health suffered when I was in prison.

My health went downwards when I was in prison. I did not have the supports. If I had had that one person that I could have gone to who could have told me where my kids were, how they were doing and just to have had that connection, I might not have struggled so much and I would not have spent so many sentences in the Dóchas Centre. I am happy to say Barnardos is on board now and the feedback I get when I meet some of these young women that are mothers is positive. It is to have that one connection in there because you feel so isolated in there and you are just thrown in there. When you come back out, you are coming back out to do the exact same things because you face the exact same challenges. There is no difference. You are just getting some time to rest and you come back out through the revolving door, as the girls are saying here.

For me, it is the supports like Barnardos coming in and making the women feel like someone listening and someone cares, because when you are in there, you do not think anyone cares. You already come from a system that has failed you and you have been already been brought up in a way that is not good enough. When you are thrown into the system, you get that sense that you do not deserve to be a mother, that this is why you are here, and that if you had wanted to be a mother, you should not have done what you did and you should not be here. That is not what they would call a mother. That relationship between Barnardos and the girls that can connect the families together outside and inside is a great positive change in the prison and will only do great things for the girls. As far as I know and from the information I get, when the girls come out and I meet them, that is the first thing. I am very thankful to be here to give my input.