Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Foremost in of all this is the ability of the prisoners' families to travel to Thornton Hall for visits. There is no public transport and it would be very awkward for them. In choosing a site in the middle of nowhere with no public transport one wonders how families are going to get there. Measures could be put together, but the travel issue does not seem to have been considered.

Egans Cash and Carry, on the boundary of Mountjoy Prison, was purchased. Why could it not have been developed while some of the in-cell sanitation and other conditions were being addressed? As I understand it, it is still in the ownership of the OPW and the Department of Justice and Equality. It was a ready-made alternative for improving the conditions beside the prison. The Department had the site in Shanganagh which belonged to the Department of Justice and Equality, but it sold it. The Department could have held on to it to expand the prison and develop other, broader prison services and it would not have cost a penny.

The downturn in the economy came in 2008 and I presume that, at that stage, the Department had no money to carry out the works at Thornton Hall.