Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. He is right that one of the biggest challenges is making sure that we have enough prison staff to manage the overall prison population, which is increasing, but also to make sure prisoners are able to access their education and health needs. They are impacted where there are not enough people essentially to transport them to that class or whatever it is they are going to. This year's budget will allow for 35,000 additional hours to meet many of those challenges. That is up to 60 officers. I would like more but we have to build on the work that has been done to date, in the past three year. I do not have the exact figure for the past three years but we have seen a larger increase in the number of staff than we have had in many years. I want to keep that momentum going.

In regard to the educational services, for 2024 the educational budget is €1.709 million, which is an increase of €150,000 on the previous year. In terms of the addiction issues among the prison population, on 29 November last, the end of the year, the Irish Prison Service, IPS, officially launched the Irish Prison Service drug strategy 2023 to 2026. This means the strategy itself will be rolled out with the support of the current and the additional officers as well. In regard to options available to prisoners, they can, as part of the assessment process, discuss treatment options with healthcare staff. This may include stabilisation on methadone maintenance for those who wish to continue while in prison and where they will return to the community on release. While drug treatment services are provided in all closed prisons, the same type of programmes are not offered in the open prisons because a condition of transfer to an open prison is that they are drug free. Therefore, they are not availing of those particular types of services. However, counselling sessions are provided by Merchants Quay Ireland. These are available in the open prisons, as is Narcotics Anonymous, which is a prisoner leading community link. Various services are available in the same way that educational services are there.

I appreciate that sometimes they are impacted by the level of staffing. However, the staffing this year, while slightly lower than what we would have had last year, certainly builds and continues that momentum. I would like to see that increase further. As well as that, in 2023 two prison doctors and 17 prison nurses were recruited. That is why I referred to the significant increase last year, which we obviously want to continue to build on.