Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that the Department will come back to me in writing. Are the Department or Irish Prison Service management in Longford aware of allegations that PMDS exists in name only within prisons, with scoring being picked at random and often subjectively determined by the relevant governor, rather than informed by the proper processes laid down when it was introduced and with ongoing monitoring by assistant chiefs and chiefs with regular reports, as Mr. O'Driscoll has outlined the process?

I ask that the Department make the necessary inquiries into that.

I made a few comments to clarify my position on the mess committees, as opposed to the POA's view of my position, at the beginning of the meeting. In the Secretary General's response of 7 February you said that voluntary mess committees "operate as independent ... entities from the Irish Prison Service". I note from an email I have seen that the director general of the committee communicated to all governors on 28 January and used the same sentence. How this can be? We established that there was a lengthy industrial relations process that led to their establishment and that staff costs and the prison gratuity were covered by central funds or the Prison Service itself. If they are independent, as the Irish Prison Service and the Secretary General asserted, and not under the control of the Irish Prison Service, would this not constitute a breach of rules 30 and 31 of the Prison Rules of 2007 regarding the employment of prisoners?