Mr. Noel Waters:

It was still an option for the Department and the Government which was involved all the way along the line to proceed with the project at Thornton Hall. However, the right decision was made to call a halt to it. If we had gone ahead, the conversation we would be having today would be entirely different in nature. We would not know where we were. Perhaps the PPP might have moved forward or perhaps it would not have. We would, however, be in a quagmire. The Government accepted our view that it should be stopped. As we realised that the situation in Mountjoy Prison was unsustainable, the programme of refurbishment and the measures to deal with slopping out commenced. It has been a very successful programme, carried out at a very good cost. While it prolongs Mountjoy Prison, it has nowhere near the capacity it had many years ago when there were 1,100 prisoners in the complex, but it will not prolong it forever as it does not address the structural issues at the prison.