Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 December 2020

Public Accounts Committee

2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 21 - Prisons
Chapter 7 – Catering and Ancillary Services in Prisons

11:30 am

Photo of Catherine MurphyCatherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have a few points I want to go through. On the issue of Thornton Hall, €30 million was spent on the site itself and an additional €20 million was spent on services such as roads, water etc., so it may well be a strategic asset but it is a pretty expensive one. Could the witnesses show us a map as I think that format might be helpful in seeing exactly what might be available and what uses there might be for the site? There might be discussion around that, so perhaps the witnesses could provide us with that.

Yesterday we talked about an article in The Irish Timeson the detention of an individual who was refused the right to enter the country. The witness did say that it was an unfortunate case. Since then, I have discovered that, in 2019, somewhere in the region of 500 people found themselves in such a position where they were refused the right to enter the country and were detained as a consequence. Given that we have a prison population of 4,000, 500 is a significant number, even considering the fact that most of them are not detained for a protracted period of time. Can we get some detail on that?

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