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:

They are, although we are actually recruiting at the moment. That point has not been made yet. There is a recruitment campaign under way at the moment through which we expect to hire 80 new prison staff, which will be the first recruitment into the prison system since 2008. That will obviously bring a welcome injection of new blood into the system. It is my understanding that there was a very significant level of interest, with almost 7,000 people applying. That will be whittled down to an initial 80, which will bring our staff numbers back up. As I said, numbers have fallen fairly dramatically since the high point back in 2007.

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