Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 21 – Prisons
Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts Special Report No. 93: Annualised Hours of the Prison Service

9:00 am

Mr. Noel Waters:

The review is under way. I would not attempt to underplay the difficulties that there will in terms of changing that. The prison officers are very well represented by their union representatives. Getting to where we are now took a very long time. They operate on the basis, as one would expect of any union, of "what we have we hold". We will have to negotiate that with them. That is going to be an issue for us, but we are up for that. If we can have independent evidence that can show that the system can work even better, and we await what the outcome of the review will be, I think we can take that forward. It will be a tough fight.

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