THE suspension of the sex offenders programme at Arbour Hill Prison is a backward step in the prison service.

MUCH attention has been focused on hospital closures, but that obscures the reduction in community healthcare services.

HAVING been a social worker in the field of mental health care, both in Ireland and Britain, I welcomed your well-balanced editorial (Irish Examiner, July 24) in which you exposed “the scandal of using Irish prisons as ‘psychiatric waiting rooms’ — the equivalent of A&E trolleys in overcrowded hospitals” and the failure by the State to address the problem of mental illness in society.