Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 17 January 2019
Public Accounts Committee
2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 21 - Prisons
9:00 am
Ms Caron McCaffrey:
We would fall into the category of unlawful detention. A significant number of claims are taken by prisoners about their detention and, at any one time, 160-odd claims may be under way by prisoners against the State for unlawful detention. The Deputy is correct to say it would not fall into the category of arrest. It is unlawful detention.
Regrettably, I do not have breakdown of individual cases but perhaps I can talk in a general sense. I mentioned we have a compliance executive team and one of the areas around which we are very focused is the environment and particularly risks that arise within the environment. The Deputy mentioned TB and there is also legionella and other bacterial infections. We have a huge amount of work and focus in place in ensuring that, from a health and safety management perspective, we have systems in place to ensure we mitigate against those issues arising in the prison.
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