We have apologies from Deputy Devine and Senator Nicole Ryan. Deputy Ó Murchú is stepping in for Deputy Devine. I am delighted to open the 14th public meeting of the Joint Committee on Drugs Use in our second session on treatment, recovery and rehabilitation.

I welcome our witnesses: from Merchants Quay Ireland Ms Niamh McGuinness, deputy head of operations, prisons and regional addiction services, and Mr. Karl Ducque, treatment and recovery programme co-ordinator; from Spéire Nua Mr. Damien Quinn, founder; and from the Peter McVerry Trust Ms Noelle Woods, director of nursing, addiction, IPAS and housing first services, and Ms Stephanie Kirwan, head of services, health, mental health and standards. You are all very welcome to our committee.

I remind witnesses and members of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such request.

I also remind members of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. Members of the committee attending remotely must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House. This is due to the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where Parliament has chosen to sit. In that regard, I ask any members partaking via Microsoft Teams to confirm prior to making their contribution to the meeting that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

All opening statements have been circulated to members and will be published on the Oireachtas website after this session. As agreed, opening statements will be limited to five minutes each to allow time for questions and answers. I am conscious of the wide range of issues to be discussed today. If necessary, further or more detailed information can be sent to the clerk for circulation to members.

I should also mention that members will be in and out of the committee room depending on their Dáil or Seanad requirements in the Chambers, so I ask witnesses not to read more into that.

I invite Ms Niamh McGuinness to deliver her opening statement.

I thank the committee for the invitation to speak on this important issue. As you said, a Chathaoirligh, my name is Niamh McGuinness and I am deputy head of operations with Merchants Quay Ireland.

Merchants Quay has been delivering addiction services in the Irish Prison Service for more than 15 years. The relationship between the voluntary service, namely, Merchants Quay, and the statutory IPS services is going from strength to strength as both recognise the indisputable need for enhanced addiction and mental health treatment services across the 13 prisons in Ireland.

It has been well covered in the media recently that the Irish prison population has surged, exceeding 122% capacity in many regions and 134% in Mountjoy. As of 21 January, there were 5,747 people in custody, 600 of them on mattresses. Although overcrowding is extremely problematic for both the people in prison and those working there, the true crisis is the unaddressed trauma, mental health challenges and addiction that drive the revolving door.

Research consistently indicates that approximately 70% of people entering the prison system arrive with an active substance use disorder or have received a custodial sentence for a crime directly related to their addiction. Despite these overwhelming numbers, not everyone gets to avail of addiction services while serving their sentences. This can be because of long waiting lists exacerbated by both staffing issues and a shortage of physical spaces available to see people.

Expecting people to just will their way out of addiction through punishment without treatment is a recipe for failure. Evidence shows that when we integrate rehabilitation into the prison environment and promote the possibility of recovery, the results can be transformative.

Merchants Quay, in collaboration with our colleagues in IPS care and rehabilitation, is working to diversify the services provided to those individuals in prison impacted by addiction and mental health. One-to-one addiction psychotherapy is not enough on its own, so we are developing psychoeducational groups, case management, prison recovery education, recovery coaching and the treatment and rehabilitation programme, TARP, which my colleague will present on in a moment, which are all proven to support people to stabilise their lives and prepare for recovery after prison. The benefits of these interventions extend well beyond the individual as successful prison-based treatment is a win for the families, the community and wider society. Reduced recidivism benefits the judicial system and the economic benefit is undeniable. Access to people and to spaces to provide these services is an ongoing challenge.

Currently, we deliver an evidence-based treatment programme, TARP, from a dedicated and secure landing in the Mountjoy campus. There are spaces for nine men to complete this eight-week programme, with five cycles run per year. That equates to just 45 men per year for a prison population exceeding 5,000, and, currently, there are zero places for women. While the work to establish alternatives to criminalising people with addiction continues, the need for a dedicated and secure space in each of the prisons to provide treatment programmes is undisputed.

If we consider that 70% of 5,000 people is 3,500 people, and even if only half of those chose to avail of treatment, the risk of recidivism would be reduced significantly. Currently, approximately 600 people are engaged with Merchants Quay services across the prison estate, but a further 1,200 people remain on waiting lists. People on remand or those serving short sentences often do not get to access recovery programmes while in custody, and this is really a missed opportunity for all.

There has been a welcome increase in budgets this year to respond to addiction and dual diagnosis in Irish prisons. This allows for the development of a health-led approach where the prison healthcare system is interconnected with community-based services via our successful collaboration.

The link between addiction and trauma is undeniable and well researched. The research shows that more than 80% of individuals in our prisons have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, with nearly half reporting four or more. For these individuals, substance use is rarely about pleasure; it is a desperate attempt at self-medication to numb the pain of early-life abuse, neglect, poverty or violence. To truly address mental health and addiction, we must recognise that we are not always dealing with a choice to offend, but very often with survival mechanisms.

Furthermore, we must also face a difficult truth: that the prison environment itself is a source of secondary trauma. Extreme overcrowding, the constant sensory triggers of clanging gates, violent outbursts, and the loss of autonomy do not encourage reflection; they trigger a "fight or flight" response that deepens the roots of addiction. Retraumatisation in a prison is practically inevitable. Better access to recovery supports is the only answer.

What is needed? The need is clear. When planning to increase prison capacity, a dedicated space in each prison to run trauma-informed treatment and rehabilitation programmes for people to access while in custody, or a dedicated building to provide a national treatment rehabilitation programme for people in custody is essential. This would help us to break the cycle of the revolving door. It would ensure that a person's sentence becomes an opportunity for healing rather than a period of further decline.

I thank Chair, Deputies and Senators for the opportunity to address the committee. My name is Karl Ducque. I am the co-ordinator of the treatment and rehabilitation programme, TARP, which is an intensive prison-based addiction treatment programme located in Mountjoy Prison and managed by Merchants Quay Ireland.

TARP is an intensive, eight-week structured programme grounded in evidence-based therapeutic principles. Participants are accommodated on the medical unit in Mountjoy Prison and are physically separated from the general prison population. This arrangement creates what we like to call a sterile environment, designed to reduce exposure to drugs, intimidation and prison subculture and to enable participants to engage meaningfully with treatment.

The programme operates five cycles per year, with nine participants per cycle, allowing the treatment and rehabilitation programme to work with 45 men annually. Participants engage in daily psychoeducational group work and structured therapeutic interventions, supported by individual care plans, with the aim of preparing them for progression into further treatment and residential rehabilitation where appropriate.

TARP has recently undergone formal evaluation, and Merchants Quay Ireland is actively implementing the recommendations arising from that process. These developments include strengthening our prison programme structure, enhancing therapeutic content and improving progression planning and continuity of care. This reflects a commitment by Merchants Quay Ireland to continuous improvement and to aligning prison-based treatment with best international practice.

In the longer term, TARP has a strategic goal of developing a fully embedded therapeutic community within the prison setting. The intention is to move beyond a time-limited intervention model towards a more comprehensive rehabilitative environment that supports sustained behavioural change, prosocial identity development and recovery-orientated living within custody.

The majority of people leaving TARP are well equipped to move forward. Men who are given the opportunity to complete treatment while in prison often finish successfully, develop a more positive mindset and gain access to community services.

These supports significantly increase their chances of achieving recovery and maintaining a positive outcome.

Despite the impact, TARP operates within a context of substantial unmet need. Research consistently demonstrates that approximately 70% of people in custody experience addiction issues. With over 5,000 men currently in custody nationally, this suggests that approximately 3,500 individuals require addiction-specific intervention. Against this backdrop, the treatment and rehabilitation programme’s capacity to treat 45 men per year highlights a significant gap between need and provision. It is also important to note that there is currently no equivalent treatment and rehabilitation programme available within the women’s prison estate, despite evidence that women in custody present with particularly high levels of addiction, trauma, and complex need. This represents a critical gap in service provision. Merchants Quay Ireland currently has three addiction counsellors operating on-site in Mountjoy Prison, allowing for the safe management of approximately 30 active clients at any one time. As a result, many individuals who are motivated to engage in treatment are unable to access timely intervention during their period in custody. While progression into residential treatment is an important objective of the treatment and rehabilitation programme, it is neither realistic nor feasible to assume this outcome for all participants. Capacity within residential services is limited, and community-based treatment services are also significantly under-resourced. This presents a major challenge to continuity of care following release, despite the progress achieved during custody.

The effectiveness of therapeutic community models in custodial settings is well-established. International research demonstrates that prison-based therapeutic communities significantly reduce substance use, improve institutional behaviour and lower rates of reoffending, particularly when followed by structured aftercare. These outcomes are achieved because therapeutic communities address addiction holistically, incorporating responsibility, emotional regulation, social learning and prosocial identity development. TARP reflects these principles within the custodial environment and represents a foundation upon which a broader therapeutic community model could be developed within the prison system. The annual cost of incarcerating one individual is just under €100,000. Continued investment in imprisonment without adequate treatment does little to address the underlying drivers of offending behaviour. In contrast, evidence consistently shows that investment in structured addiction treatment reduces recidivism and delivers better long-term outcomes for individuals and communities.

In conclusion, if we are serious about reducing reoffending, enhancing public safety and ensuring effective use of public resources, there must be a significant expansion of addiction treatment within the prison system. This includes scaling up the treatment and rehabilitation programme, supporting its development into a therapeutic community model, introducing equivalent provision for women in custody, and strengthening community-based treatment services to ensure continuity of care on release. Investment in treatment and rehabilitation is not a soft option; it is an evidence-led, cost-effective response that benefits individuals, families and society as a whole. The treatment and rehabilitation programme demonstrates what can be achieved when evidence-based interventions are properly resourced and the cost of inaction both in human and economic terms is far too high to ignore. I thank the committee for its attention and welcome any questions.

I thank the committee for the invitation. I will begin with an uncomfortable truth. The majority of people caught up in our justice system are people who use drugs. Addiction and incarceration are not separate policy areas. They are deeply intertwined and our current approach to both is failing. Some 61% of people released from Irish prisons reoffend within three years. For under-21s, it is 84%. We spend €99,000 per person per year on incarceration in adult prisons. Meanwhile, the Department of justice is planning 1,500 new prison spaces. Decades of evidence tell us we cannot police our way out of a drug problem. We have fought a war on drugs for generations and we lose that war daily. This comes from a man who was on the wrong side of that war for many years. More enforcement, more prison beds and more of the same will not deliver different results.

Ask ten people in the justice system what rehabilitation means and we will get ten different answers or none at all. As a learned friend and member of our Spéire Nua network quite rightly pointed out, there is no agreed national definition, no consistent framework and no clear pathway from addiction and offending to recovery and contribution. If we cannot unilaterally define what rehabilitation is, we cannot say that we are working towards it. I am not alone in saying this. The Department of Health’s own stakeholder consultation involving 241 participants feeding into the next national drugs strategy identified the same gap. They called explicitly for a clear definition of "recovery" to be included in the new strategy. They noted that current strategy language is not accessible and top down in nature. The criminologist Elliott Currie calls most of what passes for rehabilitation "conformist intervention" - programmes that teach people to accept their place, make better choices and take personal responsibility. Conformist intervention locates the problem entirely in the individual while ignoring the systemic forces that shaped them. It does not inspire, it does not transform and it does not work, not reliably for the most part anyway. I know this because I live it, with years in the system being told the problem was me. What nobody acknowledged was the community I came from, the background and start in life that I got, where I was systematically deprived of opportunity and where the pathway to prison was clearer than any pathway to purpose.

Currie proposes transformative intervention, not fitting people into a broken system, but engaging them in changing the conditions that damaged them. It rests on three principles. First, consciousness, understanding that your troubles have causes outside yourself. It is no accident our prisons are filled with people from certain eircodes and with people with no fixed abode. Second, solidarity, recognising that collective action, not competition, is the path forward. The person beside you in recovery is your ally, not your enemy. Third, hope, not blind optimism, but the conviction that your efforts matter, that change is possible. That is what we deliver in Spéire Nua. Our seven pillar disclosure model helps people demonstrate, with evidence, their commitment to change. Our peer mentors with lived experience support others through transformation. Our work is now embedded in national policy. Action 1.6 of the Department of justice’s Building Pathways Together strategy formally includes our certificates of commitment to change. The stakeholder consultation echoed this need, calling for more support for individuals with lived experience in both strategy planning and implementation and noting the critical shortage of post-residential services and recovery housing. We do not need to invent solutions, we need to resource the ones that exist.

The Department of justice is investing in future prison capacity. I want to propose a radical but practical alternative. We have opportunities across multiple Departments - justice, housing, Health, enterprise, and the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht. The consultation itself called for stronger linkages between these Departments and local services. Alongside existing prison retrofitting training programmes, people in prison could be involved in building their own step-down recovery units rather than more prison cells. These step-down units would be places where recovery, abstinence and support of each other are the values and where people transition from custody to community with purpose, skills, and support. This is not soft justice; this is smart justice. This would build capacity, teach trades and create the infrastructure for genuine rehabilitation.

I say this begrudgingly, but honestly: I believe legalisation deserves serious consideration. This is not because drugs are harmless. I have seen the devastation and been personally devastated too. It is because criminalisation has failed. We have policed this problem for decades and the problem has only grown. Prohibition enriches criminals and marginalises people who need health support, not handcuffs. The stakeholder consultation noted that a very small number of participants argued for the legalisation of cannabis. I was one of those voices, but with a firm condition. Legalisation must come with accountability. All tax revenues generated must be explicitly ring-fenced for health and education, not absorbed into general expenditure but directed specifically toward treatment, recovery services, prevention, and the communities most affected. If we are going to have this conversation, and I believe we must , we must have it honestly.

Elliott Currie wrote that conformist programmes teach: "'The world don’t change for you; you change for the world'". Transformative intervention says the opposite: "you can - and should - change the world, and in the process you will change yourself." That is what we offer. That is what we have proven works. It aligns with what 241 stakeholders have told the Department of Health. Everybody wins when someone turns their life around.

I thank the committee for the invitation to speak today. I am director of nursing, addiction, IPAS and Housing First services at the Peter McVerry Trust. I am joined by my colleague Ms Stephanie Kirwan, head of specialist support services.

The Peter McVerry Trust is a national housing and homeless charity providing trauma-informed low-threshold addiction and recovery supports alongside Housing First-supported temporary accommodation, family hubs, aftercare and education services. In 2025, we supported more than 12,000 people across our services. Within our addiction services and recovery portfolio, we operate five core services: our day addiction service, residential community detox and treatment service, residential stabilisation service, drug-free supported housing and aftercare services.

All of our addiction services are underpinned by the Seeking Safety model. This evidence-based and present-focused programme was adopted following a sustained review of service outcomes and repeated presentations from people with significant histories of trauma. This evidence-based programme equips participants with practical and safe coping strategies emphasising present-focused skill development rather than revisiting past traumatic events. International evidence shows that this leads to more stable and sustained recovery outcomes. In 2025, our addiction and recovery services supported 578 unique individuals throughout our day, residential, drug-free housing and aftercare services.

The national drugs strategy represents a progressive shift towards treating drug use as a public health issue. The Government's 2026 commitment of an additional €11 million in funding is strongly welcomed, as is the expanded access to buprenorphine, which supports harm-reduction, stabilisation and greater independence for people with long-term opioid dependence. However, critical challenges remain. Funding structures for NGOs need strengthening. Services require predictable, timely and multi-annual funding to meet rising and complex needs. Drug use affects every town and village and, therefore, every region must have equitable access to treatment. A mix of fixed and mobile outreach supports is essential so that people can access help when and where it is needed. Treatment models must be matched to individual need and not constrained by what happens to be available. People with complex trauma benefit from Seeking Safety while those with behavioural challenges require a therapeutic approach, often involving a peer component. Personalised care pathways produce far better outcomes. We also welcome the expansion of the naloxone programme, which is saving lives by equipping support workers, peers and family members to respond rapidly to overdose situations both in services and within the wider community.

Drug use and addiction cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider social context. For many people, particularly young people, drug use is often linked to undiagnosed or untreated mental health issues. Without integrated mental health supports, meaningful recovery is significantly undermined. We are also increasingly concerned about mothers with young children, who are often excluded from current models of treatment. This is often the result of challenges in securing childcare arrangements for prolonged periods to allow mothers to access residential treatment services. Expanding day programme options may provide a safe and accessible alternative. However, in the longer term, providing similar opportunities for residential treatment to females on a wider scale must be a consideration to make access more fluid and comfortable.

Drug intimidation has become a common theme across our services. Those availing of services are doing so because they want to recover but they are equally aware of ongoing threats to their families and homes as a result of ongoing drug debts. It is common for debts to accumulate interest not based on set rates but at the discretion of the drug dealers. Families are often not in a position to pay debts because of the rising cost or interest. We have seen positive outcomes generated through community policing in certain pockets of the capital. The presence and engagement of An Garda Síochána is lending to communities feeling safer and equally supported. The Peter McVerry Trust advocates for a restorative justice approach to be adopted at a national level to support communities, families and individuals where drug debt has accumulated to find more humane resolutions and to safeguard both families and communities.

Although our residential community detox and treatment service operates nationally, gaps in the system persist. For example, if a person from County Kerry completes the programme and is homeless, we do not have the ability to place them in aftercare housing in Dublin. This breaks the recovery pathway at a critical moment. Such gaps place further strain on already vulnerable individuals who are new to recovery and who do not have a stable place to call home. They often have to avail of homeless services to find accommodation. Challenges can and do exist in mainstream homeless services where drug use is an ongoing feature, resulting in individuals who have accessed treatment services being exposed to ongoing substance misuse.

Ms Woods is a minute over so I will ask her to stop there, if that is okay.

I am sorry.

It is absolutely fine. I will give Ms Woods a moment to catch up during the session.

That is perfect. I thank the Cathaoirleach.

I welcome the witnesses and apologise for being late. I was just in the Seanad. I will direct my first question to Mr. Quinn. I know a lot about Spéire Nua and I know Mr. Quinn in a personal capacity. Spéire Nua provides something like a step-down service. A service user might be a person coming out of prison who is looking for a bit of rehabilitation and to get back into society. What can be done to prevent people even getting into the prison system? Is enough being done in that space before people actually get into prison and then come out to use the service? How does Mr. Quinn see those kinds of services at the moment? What is needed?

As I said earlier, a lot of people come from very disadvantaged areas. If we were to overlay the Pobal deprivation indices onto patterns of offending behaviour, there would be a fairly strong match. It is about channelling services, supports and opportunities into those deprived areas so that people can do something for themselves rather than being stuck in a fishbowl with no support and pockets of crime.

Spéire Nua is more like a friendship network than anything else. There are no hierarchies. We are all supportive of each other and want to see each other do well. Some really positive stuff has happened on that front. We have had success with employer partnerships. One particular employer took on 85 people for us last year, including some people who were still serving time in open prisons. That is really transformative. When I got out, I spent a year really floundering. Despite having education and the space to rehabilitate in prison and despite doing everything right, when I went back to my area, which is very rural, I struggled to get on because I had a label I could not get away from. With regard to what we can do better, the big thing for me is secondary punishment. People go to prison to be punished and are then faced with secondary punishment years after. That needs to change. A societal shift needs to happen with regard to the way people are viewed and judged. That is a problematic area.

We see lots of people and it is really rewarding to be part of their transformative journey and to see them get on and move into good positions in life. The structure is there. We have a network nationally and across the Border. As I said earlier, the services and the friendship exist. We just need resources to keep doing what we are doing and to engage with people who have been through these systems a little bit more. That would help us a lot on our way.

I thank Mr. Quinn. My second question is for the Peter McVerry Trust and it is on supporting people in the homeless service. I have worked in homeless services and have seen people who are getting better and making progress being moved out of that service and into a worse-off service, where they then deteriorate. I am not saying this is happening in the Peter McVerry Trust's services. I am just sharing my experience of working in homeless services. The system is sometimes housing people in areas that are inadequate. They may be rural or inaccessible. People are put into homes but when people are going through rehabilitation following addiction or having been in prison, they are learning everything for the first time so they end up coming right back into homeless services. People sometimes cannot understand why a person cannot live independently when given a house or area to live in and ends up back into the same cycle.

How does the trust manage that or how does it break that cycle for people?

Homelessness services are very challenging environments, especially for any individual availing of the service and even more so for somebody in the early stages of their recovery. At all times we are trying to manage the participant group throughout a continuum of care in our services. The focus at all times is that when somebody has completed their treatment programme, the goal is to support them into drug-free accommodation. The trust has 65 drug-free accommodation beds within the Dublin remit. Some of our services have a national remit and as such we receive referrals from all over the country. The challenge is that we do not have the ability to place individuals outside the Dublin area into those aftercare beds. It leaves us in a very challenging situation for supporting onward progression.

It is well known that early recovery is a very vulnerable place for any individual. In that respect all our attempts are orientated towards trying to achieve some level of stability. If we are to think of the wider context outside homelessness services and into the housing context, we have an established housing first programme that operates on a national basis. It is specifically intended to support individuals with long-term histories of homelessness, addiction, mental health and greater overall complexity.

Something I learned very early in my career was that it is not just about a home for an individual because a home really only represents four walls. What we often find, which has informed the programme collectively over the last number of years, is that putting an individual into a home is only a very small part of the bigger picture. A lot of individuals, even if they have been sleeping rough and have been in and out of homelessness services for a long time, have also built a community, whether that is on the street or in homelessness services. When you take somebody out of that, it becomes very isolating. The likes of the housing first programme is intended to provide wraparound supports on an in-reach basis into the home, looking at all matters like management of utility bills, ongoing support with isolation and connecting people to their community. That really is how the picture has to be seen. Recovery is obviously a huge undertaking for any individual but it is only part of the bigger picture in the long term. Services have to be equipped to support that individual and be ready and prepared to walk the line with the individual.

Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe go léir. I apologise about earlier. I tested my earphones and they did not work out too well. It is hardly shocking that some of the things the witnesses have talked about included there being gaps and insufficient capacity. Even in relation to TARP, Ms McGuinness was talking about there not being enough space available in Mountjoy and there being nothing in the women's prison at the moment. It was similar to what Dr. Garett McGovern said to us previously in that where there is service, it is not always based on what the need is or even what the type of addiction is. What do we need to deliver a decent service? It is almost the same question again.

I have a follow-up question on drug debt intimidation, which was brought up. That has to be taken into account and it is about looking after the family and the person who is under the cosh. It is always difficult to operate community restorative practice, CRJ. It takes two to tango and all that, and some of the characters we are trying to deal with are not great. I get that the witnesses cannot out-police this but there is a certain part of policing that needs to happen, if just to secure those who are under pressure and find themselves in these circumstances.

If we had a magic wand, ideally TARP would have its own separate building where a therapeutic community could be developed to treat the men holistically. We could prepare them a little better for reintegration into the community. More resources would be good. We are very limited at the moment in the space and time we have to work with the men. We have eight weeks to work intensively with them and we are working on addiction but also preparing them to be put back out into the community. That is why it is vital for-----

Many of them would not have had the supports beforehand. We could probably have avoided a lot of this.

Yes, and it makes sense. Everything we are talking about today we already know. It is kind of there in all the research. For me it is time for investment in the quality of work Merchants Quay Ireland is providing within the prison. We have spoken about it. All the research is there. About 70% of the people in there are struggling with addictions. Let us invest in it.

Yes, we are repeating ourselves.

Yes. We treat these men in prison, we talk about it and we do modules on revolving doors and coming in and out of prison. However, when you look at it, it is not really their fault if it is the higher level policies and procedures that keep them coming back. Let us invest in them. We cannot be teaching these men about the revolving door of going through addiction and going back into prison if we are not willing to change things at the top. Ideally, I would take more space and more time with the men and better investment. We talked about building super-prisons and everything but let us build a therapeutic community and stop these men from going into prison. Let us give them the chance.

On the prison overcrowding issue, over half the population is serving less than 12 months. Short sentences do more harm than good, especially if you have got accommodation, childcare needs or a job. You lose all those things if you go into prison for six weeks, but you are not there long enough for a meaningful intervention and you are thrown back out onto the streets with nowhere to go. Then you are on to the services and all that type of stuff. It is a very expensive practice. I see there was tagging and all that kind of stuff brought in and there are over 1,000 people on remand. How many of those could be on a tag in the community? With the tagging operator, whoever gets or has got the gig, what social considerations did the Department build into the tendering process? What supports are around that? What mentoring services are around that for people who are tagged waiting to be sentenced? What would it change if they were there?

We should break the cycle.

On prison capacity, building more prisons makes no sense. Changes could be made. It could be the case that nobody would go to prison for less than 12 months and if they were on that way, they could go on to a Tús programme, a CE scheme or something of that description, and if they did not show up or did not try, then they could go to prison. There are many alternatives. If a prison sentence is for less than 12 months, what is it worth?

Deputy Ó Murchú, there are four seconds left.

The other witnesses should do what they can in four seconds. Just keep talking; that is what I usually do.

There will be a second round. Thank you, Deputy. Senator Fitzpatrick is next.

Go raibh maigh agat, a Chathaoirligh. I thank all the witnesses for being here. I really appreciate their participation in this public meeting. It is hugely helpful. They have really clearly articulated what was described as the undeniable link between trauma and addiction. It is a vicious cycle of trauma, addiction and then crime. It goes around and around for far too many people.

When did the treatment and rehabilitation service that Merchants Quay Ireland is delivering in Mountjoy start?

I have been in the role eight months now. Ms McGuinness might answer that.

Okay. I do not need a specific month. I just want a sense of how long it has been in place. I see there has been a review of it but roughly how long has it been in place?

Jason Campbell wrote the programme. Was he not involved in that? He was a big part of that.

The programme has been in existence for about ten years. It underwent an independent evaluation 18 months ago. One of the recommendations was to have a full-time co-ordinator. We were able to recruit Mr. Ducque for that position and he is tasked with implementing the rest of the recommendations. It is going amazingly well. We have really upped the game in terms of the standards in the programme and we are seeing the benefits of that.

That is great. Congratulations to Mr. Ducque and well done on his appointment. It is really depressing to think it has been ten years and there are zero places for women. It makes my blood boil. It is completely unacceptable. Will Mr. Ducque share what some of those recommendations were?

To my mind, what the witnesses have all described is that, very clearly, 70% of the prison population is in some form of addiction and 1,200 of them are officially on the waiting list for some sort of treatment. The witnesses have called for a dedicated space. Which prison should be dedicated?

A whole culture change is required here. There is a distinct population that is easily identifiable. There is no mystery as to who we are trying to target here or how we could go about targeting them. What are the recommendations? We will take this up with the Prison Service, the Department of justice and the Probation Service, which should also get involved. We will be looking at those in another session.

Will Mr. Ducque talk about the programme and what recommendations he would prioritise? Which recommendations could be mainstreamed across the board, not just for specialised people like him? It sounds as though all prison staff need to be upskilled.

That is one of the recommendations. The biggest one is the expansion of TARP into the women's prison and probably in an open prison. Two other sites would be perfect. The conversations have started and the Prison Service has been very accommodating. We have spoken to the governors in Wheatfield, but ideally, I would love to get a chance to run therapy out of the community within an open prison.

Some of the other recommendations would be to continue care plans for men and make sure their progress is tracked throughout. It would also be what the Senator said there about training the prison staff to use a trauma-informed lens when dealing with some of these men.

Am I missing any of the big ones?

Improving the standards and quality was a big one, which we have done, and then the expansion after that, as Mr. Ducque said, to accommodate women.

To clarify, there are addiction counsellors in the women's prisons. There is one-to-one addiction support-----

There is just not the intensive programme

-----but they do not have access to the programmes. We need multiple programmes in multiple sites or else, as Mr. Ducque said, one big residential facility for people to access treatment.

I just have a yes-no question for Mr. Ducque. Do the participants have to be abstinent to get on the programme?

Yes.

They have to achieve that first in the prison environment.

They will be supported by the counsellors within the prison. If they get referred to TARP, we will link in with them and look at the criteria. They have to be what we call "P19 free", that is, on good behaviour. They have to be willing to detox. We are also working closely with the medics up there.

At present, we have the medical unit and the plan is for two floors, so we could have a conveyor belt going from stabilisation on one floor and up onto preparation to go into TARP on the second floor. The other landing is where they will engage with the programme.

Okay, thank you.

I thank everyone for coming here today. It is very useful to the work we are doing as a committee. We are limited on time, so I will jump to the questions.

I will start with the Peter McVerry Trust. I fully agree with Ms Kirwan on the multi-annual funding. That issue has been raised by all the services we have met with and that I deal with on a regular basis. People cannot plan ahead if they do not know what money they are going to get. That is a fair point, and I agree with her on that.

As regards the services and the roll-out to rural areas, the drug problem has exploded right around the country. It is in every village and every town. How would Ms Woods see that being managed without the resources currently allocated to the bigger cities and areas that have been ravaged for years and years? Without taking money away from them, how would she see us addressing rural villages, towns and smaller cities around the country? We need a service, so I am just wondering how she would see that being handled.

I speak outside the Dublin area because we are very fortunate in what we do have accessible to us. I would see a pooling of funding or resource by regional area as working quite well. That would provide opportunity for individuals outside of Dublin for access to services as and when they are needed. Perhaps agreements could be made between the local authorities and each of the regional areas alongside the HSE. Obviously, it needs to be looked at from a health point of view, so investment from the HSE would be required. If we were to tackle it initially on a region-by-region basis, the services should have the ability to reach individuals who are not fortunate enough to receive them in the current situation.

We have examples of people who travel to Dublin and end up worse off because they are in a homeless situation, but they do not have any access to facilities where they live.

Can I come in there?

Yes, of course.

For instance, if somebody is on a script or something up in Dublin and they are trying to get it transferred to Cork or vice versa, that is problematic. I would be a big advocate for balanced regional development. In my earlier years, I relocated to Galway and there was nothing there. There was one website, and everything was in Dublin and Cork. Unfortunately, the problem I had gone to prison for is now in every town and village in Ireland.

It is now split up into about six different areas and what needs to be looked at is how we can uniformly distribute the resources. There are many existing services already in Dublin. There is not a huge amount of need to keep pumping money in there. Spreading it out a bit is probably the best answer to that question, so that all the areas in Ireland that face the same problems will have the same supports.

I agree with Mr. Quinn to a certain extent but, as we know, it is everywhere we go in Dublin.

Ballymun has 180 services and the problems are still the same. What are they all doing? That really needs to be looked at. If the problems remain when there are 180 services concentrated in one pocket or area, what are they at?

The numbers, however, are growing exponentially all the time. I live in an urban area, and like that, there is a small service but they are swamped. They cannot deal with the need. It is an escalating problem.

Just to say, Ballymun is now a very nice place as well, but I still think-----

I agree with Mr. Quinn, but I do not think it serves to take funding away from areas that need it to invest in other areas. It is more about increasing the funding and making sure everybody is looked after, rather than taking away from people who have had a need for years.

I have visited Merchants Quay's facilities, and while I have not been into the prison yet, we will be doing that. It is a really engaging programme the witnesses are talking about, but why is it not for women? Is it about space, facilities or a lack of will within the prison? Why has it not happened in ten years? Why are Merchants Quay's services not available?

Sorry, Deputy, we are over time. I might let Ms McGuinness answer that briefly, if she can.

It is definitely not a lack of will from the women, or from the Irish Prison Service either. Everyone agrees it needs to happen. It is an issue of space and capacity. There are not enough one-to-one rooms, never mind group rooms or what Mr. Ducque described as that sterile landing that is secure and segregated from the rest of the prison.

The people on TARP have screened visits so there is zero chance of getting access to drugs on that secure landing, which is what we need to replicate in all prisons, or, as we keep saying, we need to have one dedicated facility to deliver that programme for men and women.

I appreciate everyone coming in. This is going to be a long question and I am sorry, but for context I would like to get an idea of what it is like for the witnesses on the ground. They seem to be almost picking up the pieces for what is happening elsewhere in the Prison Service, with people not getting access to some of the treatments they need.

In 1999, there was an expert group to review the structures and organisation of the prison healthcare services.

It was recommended that a postgraduate diploma in prison nursing be established, but I do not think it was. In 2003, the IPS carried out, in conjunction with the health board, a needs assessment of healthcare in the IPS. Nurses identified the need for more training and for misuse specialist nurses to be appointed in all prisons. In 2009, the IPS published a report on working together to meet the healthcare needs of prisoners. Again, it looked at the need for addiction nurses. In 2016, we had the review of drug and alcohol treatment services for adult offenders in prison. It talked about co-ordination, the need for planning for offenders with addictions issues and for addiction nurses. That did not happen. In 2023, the Crowe report was published. It talked about consultation and the role of specialist addiction nurses and recommended that that be examined. In September 2024, a parliamentary question about how many addiction nurses were employed in the IPS received the answer that there were none. That is 25 years. What impact has that had on the ground when people come out of prison with addiction? They have to be in abstinence to qualify for TARP. I would call those failings and balls being dropped in the Prison Service. What are the impacts when people come out? Mr. Quinn might be best placed to answer.

Prisons have to take in the people who are sent there. A lot of responsibility is being placed at their door but the Judiciary is where we need to look first. It should not be an automatic response to send somebody straight to prison with nothing else considered. I will give an example. I was in court with a couple of people who had done an awful lot of work on themselves, including violence reduction and Traveller mediation. They were three years waiting for the case to come up. They had jobs. They were not given a second thought. They were given a headline sentence and sent to prison. They were doing a lot of work in the community and were on the right track but still got sent to prison. That is where the problem needs to be looked at first. Why is prison the first choice? What are the alternatives?

I do an awful lot of work with the Prison Service and it tries its best to bring in programmes. We have people going in for mental health week. We have personal development, life skills and motivational speaking. We were doing workshops on coping with bereavement because some people do not get out of prison and that is an acute problem. There are over 3,000 people on waiting lists in a broken system that is heavily overpopulated. The women's is acutely overpopulated and they have no open prison. The women's prisons are far worse than the male prisons. The Prison Service is in crisis mode and needs investment. It needs to take many people doing short sentences or on remand out of the system as best it can and make it a space for rehabilitation. That way it will not need to build more prisons and will not need that type of investment, which will require staffing and all the rest of it at €99,000 per year on average. Start at the Judiciary and get it to really consider alternatives to prison. The Prison Service might then be able to respond and to offer the appropriate support the Senator described.

Does Mr. Ducque's role as a co-ordinator mean he is working clinically on the ground or is he co-ordinating clinicians?

It is more co-ordinating the programme at the moment but we are building relationships clinically on the ground. It is shocking there are no addiction nurses in the prisons. I have spoken to the nurses and they are well aware of it. They would welcome training in that. My role is co-ordinating, developing and implementing the programme. I am focused on the programme at the moment. We are dealing with nurses on the ground but they are fairly under-resourced in the prison.

Does Ms McGuinness have a view on addiction nurses?

There are addiction-specific nurses in the prisons but they are not ring-fenced roles. They are often redeployed for injury management or other duties that are considered more of a priority on any given day. Where they are in position, able to screen people on committal and able to support people's detox and medication in order to access programmes like TARP, it works extremely well.

How many of those are there?

I do not know how many addiction-specific nurses are in the prisons exactly but I know of two prisons in particular which prioritise them staying in that role where they are meeting and triaging people on committal in terms of their addiction needs. Where that happens, it strengthens the outcomes for those people and helps them get to services like Merchants Quay.

I request that we as a committee ask how many addiction nurses are in the Prison Service.

It is a good question. We will make that request.

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. It is a huge discussion. Just as we do not want to create competition between our peers in terms of recovery, we probably should also be careful not to play into the State's hands by doing that in terms of communities. If we look at, say, Ballymun and the concentration of harm there, we also have to remember, as was said by Deputy Graves, that it is about making sure everywhere has access and funding, rather than funding being moved from one place to another.

Mr. Quinn commented on the poverty index and on understanding that some communities have certain capital. When a community experiences drug use, there may be certain capital within the community. There is a lot of conversation now about drug use being in every community. That can be harmful in many ways because we do not caveat that by observing that the stigma, shame, imprisonment, people in graveyards and other harms do not exist across all communities in the same way. We should continue to centre the poverty piece, as Mr. Quinn has. If we draw comparisons between communities that have money and those that do not, we could end up disadvantaging some communities when it comes to budget spends. Services need to be improved and made agile, and be resourced to be so.

On rehabilitation and the revolving door, we keep talking about what individuals need and the trauma. Actually, it is society that keeps failing communities. For an individual to get to a place of wellness, that individual has only a certain amount of power and agency. When going back out into institutional abuse, poverty and systematic violence over generations, taking an individual's agency, will and recovery into that system is extremely difficult. That is why we need to look back on the State's failures to support communities rather than individuals being unable to uphold their own recovery.

Will Mr. Ducque speak about how people who have completed his programme are doing in their recovery? How important is recovery as part of a continuum of care, rather than a stand-alone thing? There is a lot of dialogue around recovery, but we are not acknowledging recovery is part of a continuum of care sometimes. Recovery is not a Mecca of abstinence; there are all different types of recovery. What and how well are people who have engaged in TARP doing in their recovery? They may have to go back into their communities, where there is a huge amount of harm, or the prison system, where there is also a huge amount of harm.

One example sticks out for me from the last cycle. It highlights the importance of building a safe environment. In the men's own terms, it is the hotel part of Mountjoy because it is more relaxed. They get their own food to cook and stuff. We had one guy in there who grew up in care. He is traumatised. He has no parents. He had one sister who would not speak to him. He felt guilt and shame and never spoke to her. While on the programme, he got to speak about that. When he is 18, the services are kind of gone. When he sat in the group, he said he never thought he would trust anyone again. He was in and out of prison all his life - four-year sentence, five-year sentence - and in addiction. His continuity of care was we got him into recovery housing. They need to empower themselves within their recovery. They need to find what works for them, whether it be linking in with services, a counsellor, 12-step fellowship or whatever. We got him into recovery housing and he is on TR at the moment. When we check up on him, we see he is doing more than he should be doing.

He was given that opportunity to trust people again and believe in humanity.

The stuff we are forgetting when we discuss people is that trust or those other human things cannot be measured. Often states and systems will measure outcomes very rigidly but that individual's ability to trust again will never be measured when we look at how we provide services from a financial perspective, or even from a theoretical perspective.

I wanted to come in on record that I was not criticising that Ballymun has all those services. I just wish there were that many services where I come from. That was my point.

Yes, that is grand. I just wanted to clarify.

It is a nice place and I have a lot of friends there.

On the trust piece, that is where we all come from. There is that authenticity. People dip in and dip out of it in the particular ebbs and flows of their lives but we will always be there for them. There is an open door. We do it from a good place because it matters. When you have walked the walk you know the crack. You try your best and you try to never let anybody down. That is what we offer, so going back to my earlier point-----

Mr. Quinn, you have gone just a lit bit over time but that is okay as there will be more time shortly. We have gone through all the members so I will ask my questions. We had a presentation at the justice committee from the director of prisons a couple of months ago. It is probably one of the most stark presentations I have heard in my time in the Oireachtas. He talked about conditions in the prison system being, in my words rather than his, tantamount to torture in many ways. Deprivation of liberty is taken for granted, but overcrowding and the inability to access treatment make for inhumane conditions. In its current form, if the person goes into our prison system with a trauma, an addiction or even without one, are they more likely to encounter rehabilitation and recovery options or are they more likely to have an addiction compounded?

They are more likely to have an addiction issue compounded unless they get access to service while in prison. Given what the Cathaoirleach has already heard about short sentences, often people who are given a custodial sentence for offending behaviour directly related to their addiction get short sentences. Those are the people who do not often get the access because of the long waiting list. If there are 1,200 people waiting for treatment and you are doing a short sentence the chances are you are not going to get to see anybody. For that reason we are piloting having project workers in prison. We have one working really effectively in Cloverhill at the moment because that is a remand prison. She is actively facilitating groups that people can drop in to get information about supports, how to keep themselves safe, relapse prevention, overdose prevention and information on services in their community should they happen to go to court one day and be released, which often happens. We are trying to get brief interventions signposting information to as many people as we possibly can, including naloxone training and making people aware they can take naloxone with them when they leave. It is very much a firefighting situation. Due to the success of that in Cloverhill, we have been given a budget to employ a further five project workers in different prisons around the country for the same reason. If they can access services, an intervention can be very effective in supporting them to access further services or to stop offending. Where they do not, a negative experience in prison can further compound trauma and deepen the roots of addiction.

That is probably borne out by our recidivism rates. Close to seven out of ten people who come out of prisons will reoffend within three years. It is difficult to see how they would not given the absence of rehabilitation options. Ms Kirwan and Ms Woods referenced drug-related intimidation. Will you tell us about the supports available to people in your service or who avail of them who are experiencing this intimidation?

We have seen a significant increase over the last 12 to 15 months across a variety of our services. A lot of families are struggling to pay debt while the individual is trying to access services. To be honest, the support directly available to the individual is very limited. The point I touched on was we have seen positive strides in certain pockets of the capital where we have seen community policing and support from community policing working very well in terms of people feeling somewhat more supported due to an increased presence and otherwise. However, the debt itself is not going away. Our ability to interrupt that process is very limited. We would really like to be in a position to see some change in and around addressing those matters.

Does it exist at all?

Not that I am aware of.

Okay. That is important to say.

I certainly know the impact it is having on families. I know families who have remortgaged homes. I know families who have sold personal belongings and cars because otherwise their homes would be under threat. The amount varies from €500 to €25,000, so it is very impactful. Even though the individual wants to turn their life around, I have seen people exit the programme prematurely because of the sheer anxiety related to the impact on either their community or their home, and often directly their family. One thing cannot change without the other, but in order to see a positive change, we would need to see a systematic change in how we address that issue because there is no secret to the fact we are seeing these elements in the media in terms of drug use.

Very quickly, what would you like to see happen given how serious drug-related intimidation is both to the individual and the community? What suggestion would you have?

The closest thing I can imagine is some form of resolution that would require buy-in from the individual and equally those who are selling drugs. The closest thing I could link it to would be some element of a restorative justice process. In the North of Ireland, historically, mechanisms would have been used in and around certain issues that arose. This would have involved facilitating meetings about progressive ways of moving forward that did not necessarily impact on somebody's family or somebody losing their life. I am thinking of something to that effect.

Thank you, Ms Woods. We have 14 minutes until we are scheduled to have our private session. That is not going to give enough time for any sort of comprehensive second round. I am open to members if anyone has a very quick individual question. Deputy Ruane indicated first. Then I will come to Deputy Ó Murchú. We will do this very quickly if that is okay.

It was mentioned that IPAS was part of the witnesses' brief in terms of their roles. The Peter McVerry trust is involved, as is Depaul in some sites. I do not know whether they cross over or if sites have been divided between the organisations, so apologies for that. On substance use and its impact on people within IPAS, I am wondering whether the trust provides particular on site signposting support to people who may experience addiction issues or substance use, or are they signposted into the more centralised services of the trust? I would love a bit of information on that.

All our project workers who are based across our remit of IPAS hotel provision have all the mandatory training on harm reduction, etc. There is no direct in-house support offered. Obviously we are trying to promote the concept of community and integration as well, depending on where the hotel is based, so the signposting element would definitely take place on site but it is all with a view to transitioning into community services.

To follow on from what the Cathaoirleach asked about drug debt intimidation, even with some of those CRJ projects, in an awful lot of cases when it got down to dealing with serious criminals, it ended up being for the authorities to deal with. Engaging in a restorative practice scenario means you have someone to play along with you and not all these characters are going to be up for that. We already know the witnesses do not have the services they want. We talk about homelessness services and I heard for years about us leaving people with nothing but time to contemplate the money they owe in drug debt. In some of the cases all you could do was go to the Garda. It was not that people were going to see it through but you were at least putting on the agenda of the Garda that these were criminals who were endangering people and threatening property. Then at least some action might been have taken to relieve some of the pressure. What would the witnesses' engagements be in relation to that? We all know we want earlier interventions that remove an awful lot of the need for the services we end up needing afterwards, which are almost nuclear.

I am certainly not naive to the fact that it would be the answer in its totality. As I said a couple of moments ago, it does involve buy-in from both parties and that is not easily achieved. At a national level, it is something that needs to be looked at, whether that be through individual pilot programmes across different pockets of the country or otherwise. My point is really that something needs to change.

We are ignoring it at the minute.

That is exactly it. I am conscious of the fact that big personalities are involved, there are lots of different dynamics, risks and all of those other pieces. The sheer reality of it is that when we look at the concept of recovery and we talk about prisons and all these things, we cannot look at one piece and not look at it all. If we are talking about trying to support people, through a continuum of care or over a longer period, we have to be able to look at all the other matters - society, drug debts, all those other pieces. It can be one of the single drivers that actually brings people back to drug use - the anxieties, fears and pressures. If we are looking at more sustained outcomes, we need to be able to invest in what is actually going to create that.

None of us think that Spéire Nua wants to take money from the people in Ballymun and give it out. We get it, in fairness. Just in terms of the service, the step-down programme is great. We need more of those. We need places for people to go, having been in prison. I am really concerned about the lack of services for women. I want to check whether there are women in the service, or if it is men only.

It is men and women. There is a kind of in-community prison in Dublin for women and it is a nicely run centre. Some people are getting employment from that as well. It is not very well known which is important for them from a safety point of view. On the first point, labelling people as criminals, I understand they are engaged in criminal behaviour but they are still people. Prohibition is pretty much what creates criminality, so we need to look at that to avoid criminal behaviour. On restorative justice, there is going to be a roll-out of community safety partnerships. They have a role to play in respect of restorative justice. For the prison step-down stuff I mentioned earlier, under the urban regeneration development fund and the rural regeneration development fund there are great opportunities to transform areas that are in pockets of disadvantage. There was talk of 100% funding for areas that are categorised as extremely disadvantaged. That could be quite transformative. People who are on probation or community return could get training as part of the regeneration of an area, and claim it for themselves. With that, I think that is possible in the prison. Rather than investing money for 1,500 new spaces, why not take that approach? That is where I am coming from with that.

With regard to the women's side of things, I go into the women's prison from time to time. They are on top of each other. We are putting people into a room with a load of other people and we are expecting them to cop on, whatever "cop on" means. I think prison has become a place of warehousing vulnerable people rather than addressing their needs and helping them do whatever they need to do to live a fulfilling life. That is the approach we need to start taking, rather than putting them into a group and giving them a label.

We are going to finish up but I will ask Mr. Quinn a question myself. He made a very strong point about short-term sentences and the revolving door. One characteristic of it is the short sentences and the need to try to get the Judiciary to move away from giving short sentences of less than 12 months. If the Judiciary were to do that, there is a proposal around electronic tagging. What is Mr. Quinn's view on using that as an alternative to incarceration? If an individual was prosecuted and found guilty of a crime that merited a sentence of less than 12 months, for the sake of argument, what are our witnesses' views on electronic tagging being used as an alternative?

Would a tag really be required for somebody who is doing less than 12 months?

I do not know.

What I am proposing is the Tús and CE schemes that are crying out for numbers. You get a bit of a lift when you go onto a scheme or whatever.

I know the value of those schemes and I agree. Occupational schemes like that are hugely valuable and they have to be used. I agree with all of the points Mr. Quinn made. I am actually specifically interested in the use of electronic tagging and his view on it. I do not know if there is a right or wrong answer. I would just like to know his view.

The tagging thing is relevant if there is a safety issue or a real risk. Obviously it makes sense then.

You think it perhaps should be determined by the profile of the crime that was committed.

Absolutely.

That is interesting.

With regard to the alternatives piece, if the judges maybe considered putting somebody onto a scheme in lieu of going to prison and if they engaged with that opportunity, it might change the way they see the world and it is an incentive to get out and about, socialise and all that kind of stuff.

Divert them in the first instance. Absolutely.

I do not know if I would be fully in favour of that as the alternative but I do think that if an opportunity is being provided, it should be on a wider scale. There could be recognition, in the sentence being under 12 months, that the individual could perhaps be guided towards alteratives within the community to turn their life around. A tag is restrictive and it presents as punitive. Bearing in mind individual histories of traumas and otherwise and their experiences of the general judicial system, I am not sure it would have the desired effect. If it is seen that there is trust being placed in the individual and opportunity is being afforded, I ultimately feel that better outcomes would be generated for the individual.

I would not mind adding that while the work continues to decriminalise drug use and people who use drugs. It is such a large task to address poverty and inequality in some of the areas that were mentioned. Those areas are over-represented in our prison population. I would be in favour of alternatives to custodial sentences, particularly for those shorter sentences we spoke about. Where addiction is an issue, those alternatives should be around treatment, recovery and addressing trauma. I am not so sure about tags. Maybe it could be where there is a risk, as Mr. Quinn said, but something says to me that it might just increase the barriers for people - another helping of stigma. I am not sure about that. Definitely treatment opportunities have to be there for people who are there because of addiction. While that is all being worked on, better access to services in prison is the only other option.

The option is there to protect children and vulnerable adults from anybody who has the capacity to endanger them, but if you went into mainstream prison and you told everybody that was how they were going to be viewed, a lot of people would be very upset. They did a lot of things to survive, put clothes on backs and food in their bellies. They do not generally see themselves as a risk to children and vulnerable adults. With regard to that, if people are a risk to children and vulnerable adults, then safety rails have to be put in place. If they are in the general population and just did things to survive, that is a different conversation. This is more about the society than the individuals themselves.

On behalf of the Cathaoirleach and the committee, I thank our witnesses sincerely for their contributions today. They are incredibly valuable to us. I thank them for the work they are doing. We will endeavour to make use of the information provided and we will build on it in our forthcoming sessions and our report. If afterwards there is anything additional they would like us to consider, just send it in to us.