Saoirse Brady

Good morning, David.

Thanks for having me on.

I suppose in terms of buttons, they're used in really limited circumstances.

So, you know, they're used by the prison escort corps.

So that's people like prison officers who are moving maybe prisoners between prisons or taking them to court.

and they're using the National Violence Reduction Unit down in Portlaoise.

We would not be in favour of introducing any type of weapon into a prison.

We think there are better ways to de-escalate tensions and particularly at the moment with the levels of overcrowding in prison, pensions are heightened anyway and we see that with the assault figures that have recently been published.

We have seen an increase in that.

But we also know there are proven programmes with

within prisons that have been demonstrated to de-escalate tensions and violence through the Alternatives to Violence Programme, the Traveller Mediation Service, they run peer mediation, and those have had a really positive ripple effect right across the prison estate.

And investment should be put into those rather than equipping prison officers with battens and with body-worn cameras.

It could possibly help.

And I suppose what we have seen is, you know, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the European Torture Watchdog, coming to Ireland and actually pointing out issues with blind spots with CCTV in prison that haven't captured some actual staff on prisoner assaults.

And just to be clear, that isn't a very limited number, but it has happened.

So we would say that

You know, really, we need to invest in CCTV, make sure that those blind spots are covered.

And the other thing about body worn cameras, you know, while there has been a successful trial or so we are told, we haven't seen an evaluation being published on that.

We would like to see what positives did come out of it and if there were challenges.

And the other thing about body worn cameras, I suppose, is it doesn't always provide the context.