Condition of prisoners with psychiatric problems concerning

For a long number of years, I have been an active campaigner for prisoners’ rights and the need for appropriate rehabilitation projects to help reconstruct their lives and those of their families.

Successive governments must acknowledge that issues relating to prisoner management, rehabilitation and release have received entirely inadequate and unsystematic attention.

I am deeply concerned about mentally ill prisoners. As medical experts have advised at health conferences, here and abroad, mental instability is a condition which covers a wide field and no lay person, prison officer or garda is in a position to recognise the variations of it.