A perfect Christmas present, Marian Finucane called it. When Julie-Ann Stokes (20), a former drug addict and prisoner in Mountjoy, told the RTE broadcaster of her dreams, a member of the public stepped forward promising to fulfil them.

Julie-Ann had told Ms Finucane, during a broadcast from the prison in October, that she was off drugs and her wish now was to become a motor mechanic.

Within hours a Dublin garage-owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, called the show to say that he would give Julie-Ann a start upon her release. Two months later, on December 14th at the one-year review of her five-year sentence, she was released, and was due to meet the garage-owner this month.

However, nine days later she was on remand again.

During a trip to Cork on December 23rd she and her boyfriend crashed their car and, with no means of getting back to Dublin, Julie-Ann stole £200 in three handbags. Remanded to Limerick women's prison over Christmas she was on Monday given three concurrent sentences of eight months, consecutive to the remainder of the five-year sentence.

The judge, however, did not have the authority to reactivate the original five-year sentence as it had been suspended by another court. Nor could the eight-month sentences be imposed, because they had been ordered to run consecutively with the suspended sentence, so Julie-Ann remained free.

However, her mother, Ms Bernadette Stokes (39) doubts if the garage-owner will now take her on.

"I can't see anyone giving her a third chance, not that she's had many," she said. Julie-Ann was born to Bernadette and Martin Stokes, a Traveller couple, on October 10th, 1979. She was their first daughter and second child and would eventually have six brothers and five sisters.

"Julie-Ann was a lovely child," said Bernadette, sipping a cup of coffee in Supermac in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

"Up to the age of 13 she was the loveliest little blondie child. At that time we had no caravan. We lived under canvas or plastic. If the canvas was robbed we'd stay in a car.

"Julie-Ann was going to a school for Travellers in Strand Street. She was a bit wild, though, and she never learnt to read or write there."

At the age of 14 Julie-Ann left school and as things had become "really tough" the family moved to England where one could "get accommodation straight away, no matter who you are". They lived on income support there and Julie-Ann "hung about with her cousins", getting into trouble sporadically with the police.

They returned to Blackrock when Julie-Ann was 16, the year she got engaged to another Traveller.

"He was very mannerly . . . They were too wild, crashing cars, but she loved him and I think it was when the engagement broke that she went down. She was heartbroken, but I didn't give in to pity. When I heard they'd broken up I thought `Nice one'. They were too young.

"I think that's when she got slapped on the drugs. She got very thin. Her hair got thin. After a few years I said to her I couldn't have her on the site with the drugs. So she turned and walked off into the evening."

She went to Bray where, Bernadette heard, she was committing robberies, sometimes with violence. In late 1998 Julie-Ann was remanded to Mountjoy and on December 8th that year was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.

"She was loved by all in there," smiled Bernadette. "She learnt to read, did Junior Cert English, was in a play about the Famine. When she was released, everyone wished her well."

Julie-Ann was "delighted and overwhelmed" by the opportunity to become a mechanic, she said.

"She always loved cars. When she was a little girl she'd go off with her daddy fixing cars."

Shrugging at what happened after Julie-Ann's release, Bernadette said it was almost inevitable, given that she was released just before Christmas and the "parties", that she would get into trouble.

"You can't change a person just like that."

Though stressing he could not comment on individual cases, the Director General of the Prison Authority, Mr Sean Aylward, said he hoped "she [Julie-Ann] sees a better day. Everyone has the capacity to be reformed".

The prison service in Ireland, however, is failing many with such a capacity, says Paul O'Mahony, author of Mountjoy Prisoners: A Criminological and Sociological Profile.

He called the Julie-Ann Stokes case, where a grand gesture seemed to promise an opportunity to "come good", a "fantasy being lived out in the public mind".

People coming out of prison needed more than that, he said. "They need preparation, support and back-up."

Agreeing, the Mountjoy governor, Mr John Lonergan, says the prospects for people like JulieAnn breaking out of the spiral of drugs and crime is grim. "It's no good just saying an apprenticeship will solve everything. Breaking out of that cycle is very difficult," he said.

Had Julie-Ann's case worked out the way many might have hoped in December it could have salved the public conscience about the deep-seated problems people leaving prison face, Mr O'Mahony said.

"But real life isn't like that."

As for Julie, she returned to Dublin on Wednesday, though Bernadette didn't know where she was.

"I hope she doesn't get into trouble again. I hope she sits down and thinks about life," she said. "Prison is no life for a beautiful 20-year-old girl."