Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome some of the Minister's proposals, including a prison education task force. The problem will always be in the implementation of these plans, which sound great. I spoke recently to a former prison governor who outlined the difficulties in engaging with longer term prisoners and assessing them for re-engagement with their communities. The promises contained in previous plans were not being met.

One prison in the State had two Merchant's Quay counsellors for 900 prisoners. In order to break what the Minister referred to as a cycle of imprisonment, which is often intergenerational, people have to do some sort of education and training programmes. It is simply impossible to assess a prisoner by how he or she has engaged with services such as education and training without the services being in place. The door of the cell is locked and prisoners are doing no other activities except for walking the yard. That means we are failing prisoners, families, their children and the communities they live in.

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