Dr. Ciarán McCullagh:

I will take up that point. Currently, prisons have maximum numbers. The design capacity of Cork Prison is 170 or 180 but on average there are 300 there. One can specify the maximum size of a prison but how does one stop more and more people being put in? It is fine to say that a prison can only take 300 people but in Ireland such a prison will have 500 in it within a coupe of years. There are design capacities and maximum numbers stated for all the prisons but they are never enforced. When there is a shortage of space they double, treble or quadruple up and we must stop that happening. There cannot be rehabilitative programmes in a system that works in this way.