Mr. Gabriel Keaveney:

The Irish Prison Service has a policy in place in regard to how people are moved to open centres. It should be based more on previous history, the sentence they are in for and so on. We have had difficulty getting prisoners cleared for open centres. It only happened when the overcrowding came back that the Prison Service started to send people. The open centres equate to roughly 10%. Our strong belief is that there should be a waiting list for the two open centres.

One of the other things that we raised with the Prison Service some time ago was that the Grove area in Castlerea be utilised for prisoners who are not deemed suitable for the actual open centres. It is a similar scenario. That has been done and sex offenders are being moved to that area.