Saoirse Brady

is investment in staff, investment in people, and looking at better community supports.

As I said, there are people going in for very short sentences, maybe a matter of weeks or months.

They're not going to get the help that they need in there before they're out in the community again.

This is serving no one, this revolving door, and not actually having the supports that are in place.

Ideally, we think that it should happen in the community and not prison at all, and that the prison service shouldn't be placed in this situation.

I think, though, the thing is the pressure they are under.

With almost 6,000 people in prison in a system designed for 4,700, they are overstretched and overworked, and they need further support.

What we need to see are people taken out of the prisons that don't need to be there in the first place, and serving a sentence in the community with wraparound supports that deal with the underlying addiction issues that they need.

That's what we need to see, rather than pouring more money into prisons, into infrastructure,

to house people for a very short period of time where they don't get the health supports that they need before they're out again.

I've no doubt that the primary care team in the Irish Prison Service are doing their utmost to support those people.

But ultimately, we wouldn't see people coming in and out of prison if we were actually dealing with their issues.

They do, but they have a very big workload, you know, like they have a huge caseload.

You know, we haven't, like there was an independent report done, the Crow report, and it actually recommended to the Irish Prison Service that they bring in addiction nurses specifically for this issue to alleviate...

Yeah, and it hasn't been implemented yet.

There was a high level task force on mental health and addiction.

It's made some really strong recommendations, but we need to see implementation of these recommendations to actually support the prison service to focus on what they need to focus on and to provide them with the addiction supports that, you know, will actually make a difference for the people on the ground.

Yeah, they haven't been replaced.

That's our understanding of it.

And, you know, there is a reliance on, you know, some of the therapeutic supports, which I mentioned.