A survey published last year found that 80 per cent of prisoners surveyed in Mountjoy in 1996 had left school before 16 years of age. Over 60 per cent said they had mitched regularly from school. The survey, conducted by Dr Paul O'Mahony and published in June, 1997, found that, as a group, the prisoners had "a profile of stark disadvantage."

A large majority lived in rented accommodation in poorer areas of Dublin. They came from very large families where the father usually worked as an unskilled manual labourer or was chronically unemployed. They had left school before 16 without qualifications. They were unemployed before imprisonment. They used hard drugs, were not married but had fathered children.

"A remarkably large minority were illiterate," wrote O'Mahony. "They had lost a parent in childhood through death or marital breakdown, had never held a job for more than three months, had hepatitis or were HIV positive and had made a suicide attempt." Exactly half of the sample left school before 15 years. Only one-quarter had sat public examinations. Some 44 per cent had a sibling who had been in prison.

Comparisons with the results of the National Prison Survey in England and Wales were generally unfavourable, he wrote. The number of prisoners in England and Wales who had left school before the age of 16 years was, at 43 per cent, much lower than the 80 per cent found in the Irish survey. The percentage in England and Wales who had no qualifications on arrival in prison was also 43, against 77 per cent in the Mountjoy sample.

A 1986 survey of Mountjoy prisoners found that 78 per cent had left school before the age of 16 years. According to last year's survey, the figure now stands at 80 per cent. Further, a comparison of the two surveys indicates that the proportion staying in school or getting qualifications after the age of 16 years has declined from 11 per cent to 7 per cent.