Dr. Joe Garrihy:

I will make two points on the new Limerick women's prison. First, we talked about new prisons earlier and the opening of this prison is welcome in some ways, but it increases the number of women in prison in Ireland to nearly 200. That is an escalation in prison numbers for women and not the direction we should be going. Second, the Dóchas Centre was state-of-the-art 30 years ago and I would argue it has fallen into disrepair and disuse. Many of the things much vaunted about the new prison were present in Dóchas and are not functioning now or in stasis.