Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Quite a number of us have visited Mountjoy Prison recently. We engaged with the governor and prisoners and played football against them, not very successfully I might add. It was a very constructive engagement and credit has to be given to Senator Lynn Ruane, who has been leading that discussion. I am not a member of this committee for very long but I understand that a lot of work has been done on the nature of prison life and the prison system in general. There are a significant number of people in our prison system who do not need to be there. We are spending a lot of money keeping people in prison who should not be there. The governor of Mountjoy impressed on us the absolute uselessness of having four-month sentences. People cannot engage in any of the programmes or positive prison life and it is just not working. I am thinking of the number of people within the prison system with mental health difficulties and addiction issues. We have more than 4,000 prisoners while 40 years ago we had about 1,000. The difference is the drugs issue, as the Minister said earlier. I commend the Government, in particular the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, on bringing forward the memo today on the citizens' assembly on drugs. Does the Minister feel this is money well spent when we have such a population within our prison system who are not benefiting from it and who do not need to be there? We should have a much smaller prison population in which prisoners are empowered and enhanced in their lives by their time in prison. We should not have people in there on short sentences with mental health and addiction issues, the vast majority of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is really serving no purpose whatsoever.