Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think we are speculating on figures. The Committee of Public Accounts has a duty to deal with real figures. We can all run the figures of how many hours a person works in a year. An average of five officers are required to give 24-hour coverage for 365 days of the year. If one works 40 hours a week for 45 weeks a year, that is 1,800 hours out of 8,760 hours in the year, so five staff are required. For every prisoner, only one fifth of the staff are on duty at any one time. The staff member is only there for a third of the day, while the prisoners are there for 24 hours per day. The Committee of Public Accounts wants real figures and we ask the witnesses to do their best. I am not passing the buck to them. There was an issue in Templemore. I do not know if there were issues in the Army; I think it has a slightly different system. It is all integrated and maybe this needs to be integrated. I do not know. I will only look at it with regard to real figures. I am not disputing the witnesses' figures but I do not know. I want to get real figures.