Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Not only did I not put enough work into this, I put none into it and neither did anyone in my office. I am guilty of that. Not only do I find it difficult to criticise anything that Deputy Jim O'Callaghan has put forward, I cannot even contradict anything that Deputy Daly has said. I have every intention of researching it and learning a bit about it.

I will pick up on one point that Deputy O'Callaghan made about eight years being too early to let a fella out.

If a person has not been rehabilitated and no improvement has been made to his approach to life and the people with whom he has to share the world, yes it is. However, if the work is being put in, one would hope otherwise. If I had someone in my care and I had eight years to rehabilitate them, I would be fairly disappointed with myself if they had not changed after that time.

I agree with the point about prison not working. First, some 80% or 90% of the people in prison should not be there. Second, of course if there are people who are a risk to society and are just too dangerous to be let loose then we have to do something with them. If we are going to lock them up, however, let us do something with them. We should be in a position to consider letting them out after eight years if they have made the required improvements. That is not possible under present conditions because prison is not geared that way.

We have read a lot of what the Jesuits have had to say about prisons and we have a lot to learn from them. If we took some of it on board, the notion of letting people out after eight years might not be so draconian or mad. The idea that a person does something terrible and under no circumstances should we reconsider or let them see the light of day for 15 years, does not strike me as being rational.

It costs a crazy amount of money to keep people in prison - €70,000 a year per prisoner is nuts. If we stopped putting in all the people who should not be in prison, we would have more money to help those who should be imprisoned.

The next time I come back, I promise that I will know something about the Parole Bill. I hope I can tear strips out of it, but that is unlikely.