Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 441: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the annual rehabilitation goals and targets set within the prison service; and the level of resourcing it received annually since 2005 to date in 2009. [15504/09]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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A wide range of services of a general and more specialist nature are provided within the prison system to assist in prisoner rehabilitation. Chief amongst these are healthcare, psychiatric, psychological, educational, vocational, counselling, welfare and spiritual services. As the Deputy will appreciate these services are important in helping to address offending behaviour, drug and alcohol addiction, missed educational and vocational opportunities, anger management, and self management in the interest of encouraging positive personal development and preparation for re-integration back to the community on completion of the prison sentence. For example, we now have over 90 workshops operating across the prisons capable of catering for in excess of 800 prisoners each day.

Education is an important dimension within the prison setting and a range of education opportunities are available at all institutions. These are provided in partnership with a range of educational agencies in the community including the VECs, Public Library Services, Colleges and the Arts Council. Broad programmes of education are made available which generally follow an adult education approach. The Department of Education and Science provide an allocation of whole-time teacher equivalents to the prisons through the VECs (220 in the academic year 2008/09). This enables education to be offered in all prisons including provision for the summer months and also special teaching arrangements where prisoners are segregated.

I am glad to tell the Deputy that the Irish Prison Service is also engaged in rolling out an enhanced model of sentence management for prisoners (Integrated Sentence Management - ISM). ISM will involve a new emphasis on prisoners taking greater personal responsibility for their own development through active engagement with a broad range of services in the prisons. This will lead to a more "prisoner-centred approach" to how the various services available within the prison setting can interact with individual prisoners through provision for initial assessment, goal setting and periodic review to measure progress. The development and roll-out of this model is planned to take place on a phased basis with the new system currently being piloted in two Dublin prisons.

Furthermore, the Probation Service of my Department also has an important role to play during the course of the prisoner's sentence and providing support to help with re-integration back to the community. This work ranges from helping prisoners to maintain links with family and community agencies,to encouraging them to address their offending behaviour through individual and group counselling programmes and preparation for release on completion of the sentence.

The gross expenditure figures for the Irish Prison Service as set out in the Appropriation Accounts for the years 2005-2008, are as follows:

• 2005: €388.226M

• 2006: €410.311M

• 2007: €394.550M

• 2008: €404.375M (Provisional)

The 2008 figure is provisional, pending audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Due to the multifaceted nature of rehabilitation it is not possible to disaggregate the elements of expenditure by the Irish Prison Service that relate solely to rehabilitation. As the 2009 revised estimates have not yet been published I am not in a position to provide the Deputy with the 2009 funding for the Irish Prison Service at this time.