 The Ireland's Minister for Public Service, Home Affairs, Labour and Gender Affairs Honourable Dr Virginia Albert Poyert on Friday, September 17, 2021, continued her familiarization tour of the various departments and agencies comprising her ministerial portfolio. Honourable Dr Virginia Albert Poyert visited the Baudelaire Correctional Facility and assured management that her office will provide the requisite resources and support to the correctional facility to carry out its mandates. More from Herma de Marques. Minister for Public Service, Home Affairs, Labour and Gender Affairs Honourable Dr Virginia Poyert visits at the Baudelaire Correctional Facility on Friday, September 17, 2021, to gain insight into the operations of the Ireland's primary penal facility. During the comprehensive tour, the minister was guided through each section of the building and was provided with a detailed account of its administration. The Minister for Public Service, Home Affairs, Labour and Gender Affairs also held discussions with the director of the institution, Hilary Herman, on some of the critical issues impeding the BCF. Honourable Dr Albert Poyert indicated that among the problems to be addressed is decreasing the number of prisoners at the Baudelaire Correctional Facility. What I'm very concerned about is to ensure that we minimize the number of persons who come to Baudelaire. That is a huge task, but we have to work extremely hard. What is of even greater concern is the ratio of male to female that has always been of great imbalance. We have to work very hard on our young people and our men so that they can control their emotions, they can resolve their conflict in a more amicable and peaceful manner and stay on the side of the law. And this is something we will want all our institutions in St. Lucia to begin to work at how can we reduce the number of persons that are admitted in at Baudelaire. Director of the BCF, Hilary Herman revealed some of the pertinent issues affecting the penal facility. As you know, our prison is almost 20 years old. The infrastructure is crumbling. We need locks. We need fences. We need gates. There are many issues. So we've highlighted some of those with the minister, but we realize to know that resources are limited. And in a country where we need schools, roads, rivers, bridges, we know where our priorities are. So we hope that some of the requirements that we have will be attended to. And we've passed on our priority list to the minister. Honourable Dr. Virginia Albert-Poyot is expected to meet with the cabinet of ministers to devise a plan to remedy their problems at the institution and increase the success rate of the rehabilitation programs. From the Government Information Service, I'm Hermione Mock reporting.