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

I will comment on what the Chairman said when I am finished. I mentioned vehicles at the last meeting, and in his reply on 7 February, Mr. O'Driscoll indicated that all vehicles are accounted for and that all assets have been verified by local management as being on-site. What if certain members of local management endorsed the absence, loan or alternative use of prison assets? We are taking people at their word. That is fine. Please God, all of these people are people of the highest integrity. However, ringing someone to ask whether he or she was speeding on a road and accepting his or her answer does not amount to an investigation. It seems to me that there is a crisis of confidence among hard-working prison staff at all levels about being able to call out wrongdoing in the culture that currently exists. What are we doing about it? Why, if there is a robust system in place, are people coming forward in other ways to other people in various forums, including to Members of the Oireachtas and members of various committees, this one included? Is all the information coming up in research vexatious, fantasies concocted by disgruntled staff with an axe to grind, or are some or all of these matters true? Are we prepared to check? Surely prudence demands that all matters are independently investigated.

I put it to Mr. O'Driscoll that, contrary to his claims against me, he has not tested the information I have put to him but, rather, has simply asked a question and accepted an answer, assuming therefore that an answer to my question was correct instead of carrying out an independent investigation in the interests of the taxpayer and of the health and safety and well-being and a healthy working environment and culture for prison staff? Is the Department of Justice and Equality open to the recommendation I am making now, that is, the establishment of a GSOC-style inspectorate, separate from the Irish Prison Service headquarters in Longford, with statutory powers to provide prison staff with the support and protection they require, and the confidence to which they are entitled? They should be above reproach and unable to be infected by any culture that may exist among a small number of staff at various levels. The Department is only aware of information provided by headquarters in Longford, and is dependent on that information. It appears from my research that the Longford headquarters is only aware of and only as good as the information provided to it by individual prisons. It seems that some or all individual prisons operate as islands on a number of issues. My research has led me to question the existence of a parallel investigative judicial and enforcement system across our prison services. I hope those questions will be noted and answered.

I would appreciate it if the Chairman could provide for me, in writing, the Standing Order which allows for the validity or worth of my utterances to be adjudicated upon by other members of the committee. I look forward to receiving that, and information on the Act that determines that. I have been very careful. I have taken legal advice and chosen my words very carefully today. I have not identified anyone and I have focused on processes and procedures that are absolutely relevant to the expenditure of the State and Department of Justice and Equality. I question the Chairman's competence to tell the Secretary General that he does not have to answer my questions and can, in effect, disregard the questions that I, in trying to use my time efficiently, have put to him. I accepted this morning, in advance of this meeting, that he could answer the questions after this meeting in consultation with the experts involved in the Prison Service. I would appreciate a written response to that from the Chairman, and I thank him for staying on. We are missing votes as a result, but I believe these matters are of the utmost importance, and prudence demands they require investigation and actual testing, rather than the sort of testing we have seen in the past.

I thank all of the witnesses for coming here today, and continue to extend to the Secretary General every good wish in his new role. I hope he will understand my questioning in the spirit in which it was intended. I am only interested in protecting the taxpayers and ordinary prison officers in their place of work.