Ms Caron McCaffrey:

I thank the committee for the invitation to discuss Vote 21 which had a total net expenditure of €488 million in 2024. As members will be aware, the Irish Prison Service does not have the option of refusing committals and must accept all people committed to us by the courts. In 2024 we witnessed sustained growth in the size of the prison population, with a 9.6% increase in committals and an average prison population of just over 4,900. Numbers have continued to increase and today the system is operating at 120% of capacity, with over 5,500 people in custody. The cost of keeping a person in custody has also increased by almost 12%, with an annual cost of a prison space in 2024 of €99,000. To accommodate these increasing demands, significant investments were made in the prison estate including capital projects to improve security, expand capacity and modernise facilities. The Prison Service was allocated €502 million in gross funding to ensure that key operational functions remained robust, while almost half of the €39.5 million capital budget was strategically utilised to provide additional prison spaces.

The Government has made significant capital funding available to the Prison Service in order to enhance our existing prison infrastructure and to provide additional capacity. The revised national development plan capital allocation for the Irish Prison Service will see record capital investment of over €500 million between 2026 and 2030. This funding will achieve over 1,500 spaces between now and 2031. As numbers in custody have grown, so too has the demand for prisoner services. Enhancing rehabilitation and prisoner support remains central to our mission. Education participation rates saw continued engagement, with an average of 58.5% of prisoners participating in educational programmes over the course of the year. Work training initiatives were also expanded during the year with the introduction of nearly zero energy building, NZEB, retrofitting, a critical skill to support employment for prisoners post release and reduce recidivism.

In 2024 the Irish Prison Service employed 3,740 full-time employees across a range of disciplines. Despite a competitive job market, the Prison Service recruited 270 prison officers in 2024 and is on target to recruit 300 this year. The digitalisation of services is a key part of our strategic plan and on 1 July 2024, we introduced an online payments system to allow prisoners' families to electronically transfer money into prisoners' accounts. In the final six months of 2024, 80,000 transactions were made to a value of €4.1 million. The success of this project not only reduces our levels of risk with cash handling, which is very significant, but also provides a valuable service for the families of prisoners who no longer have to travel to prison to lodge money to their family member's account.

In the face of rising expenditure as a result of a rising prison population, we continue to seek efficiencies and savings. The work of our centralised video link unit reduced the requirement for 9,000 of our staff to attend court physically through working with the Courts Service to leverage the usage of video link technology which was introduced during Covid. These are some of the successes and challenges of the Prison Service during 2024. The Secretary General and I are happy to take any questions members may have.