Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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124. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the extent to which educational and rehabilitation facilities are offered in every instance to first time offenders while in prison with the objective of diverting them from a life in crime; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44485/17]

Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by the Irish Prison Service that it provides a wide range of rehabilitative programmes to those in custody that include education, vocational training, healthcare, psychiatric, psychological, counselling, welfare and spiritual services. These programmes can offer purposeful activity to those in custody while serving their sentences and encouraging them to lead law abiding lives on release. These programmes are available in all prisons and all prisoners, including first time offenders, are eligible to use the services.

The IPS began recruiting Assistant Psychologists to the IPS Psychology Service in 2016. Assistant Psychologists focus primarily on mental health and sentence management work with prisoners. Specifically, Assistant Psychologists are tasked with completing Strength, Risk and Needs Assessments of young persons, 18-24 years, who are committed to custody on a sentence of one year or more and who do not have a post release supervision order, to better inform their sentence progression and appropriate interventions. The intention of this focussed approach is to assist young persons committed to custody in living law-abiding and purposeful lives on their release to the community. The Probation Service have recently joined this initiative by engaging in assessments with those 18-24 year olds who do have post release supervision orders.

The development of programmes for prisoners forms a central part of the Irish Prison Service Three Year Strategic Plan 2016 - 2018. There is a clear commitment in the Strategy to enhance sentence planning through Integrated Sentence Management and the delivery of prison based rehabilitative programmes.

Education in prisons is delivered in partnership between the Education Training Boards and the Irish Prison Service with a focus on providing education which is quality assured, student centred and which facilitates lifelong learning. A broad and flexible curriculum is provided which ranges from basic literacy classes and peer led tutoring to Open University. Other areas where there has been significant progress in prison education are in physical education, in the provision for higher education, in the arts and in preparing people for release. A top priority for the Irish Prison Service is ensuring help for those with reading and writing problems to this end peer mentoring programmes are currently active in all of our prisons.

The guiding principles which underpin the prisons' work and training service are to make available, work, work-training and other purposeful activities to all those in custody. Training activities are chosen to give as much variety as possible and also to give opportunities for those in prison to acquire practical skills which will help them secure employment on release. Work Training Officers have been appointed and assigned to areas such as catering, laundry, industrial cleaning, industrial skills and gym.

The Irish Prison Service has also been expanding the number of accredited courses and opportunities available to prisoners in Work Training in recent years. Enhanced partnership arrangements with accrediting bodies such as City and Guilds and the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers and the centralising of coordination and quality assurance arrangements have enabled the prison service to extend the number of available courses and activities with certification.