Maurice Hayes (Independent)

It costs €95,000 a year to keep a prisoner in prison. We could send three of them to Eton for that amount, which would at least give us a better class of criminal by the time they came out. We should consider the balance between prison, probation, the number of prison officers and what they do, and rehabilitation. I am against the attachment of social welfare earnings because it would not help families.

Interesting things are being done in other countries with regard to restorative justice and making people face up to responsibility for their crimes and work in the community. There is much to be done. We could have a very useful debate in this regard.