Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Ms Brady on one point and that is that short prison sentences should rarely, if ever, happen. The blight, especially on younger people, of being sentenced to prison, particularly when prisons are drug infested, violent and have no proper system of rehabilitation, and we must bear in mind the figure that we heard for the number of people in prison on remand. I agree with Ms Brady about that 1,000%.

Let us be frank. Mountjoy Prison will never be an appropriate place to incarcerate people. I have been there on a number of occasions and I have seen the improvements that took place in management but the prison is still innately inadequate.