Ms Saoirse Brady:

I welcome the Senator's comments about independence but disagree with what he said about Thornton Hall and the building of a new prison. While we need prison infrastructure the Government policy now is to reduce the number of people in prison overall. I hope that by doing that we will end up having the space, resources and necessary time to make prisons what they should be to ensure the civil liberties and human rights of the people within them.

On 31 August, the policy options review and action plan was published by the Minister for Justice, which contained the clear direction that people who are sentenced for less than 12 months for minor offences should not be imprisoned. In 2021, 79% of all sentence committals were for 12 months or under and, in 2022 so far, it has been 78%, which shows there is a trend. If we can address those issues then there will be no need to build a new prison. Recently Limerick Prison was improved so I believe that we can renovate and do things to the existing prisons within our resources.