Mr. Noel Waters:

I thank the Chairman. I have circulated a copy of my opening statement. I propose to focus on a few points from it rather than delaying the committee by reading the statement verbatim. I might ask my colleague, Mr. Michael Donnellan, who is the Director General of the Irish Prison Service, to say a few words at the end if that is okay. I acknowledge the useful work that has been done by the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff to determine where we are going with annualised hours.

As I have set out in my statement, there was a long history behind the agreement to introduce annualised hours in the Prison Service in 2005. To put it simply, the decision to introduce annualised hours was made against a background of very substantial overtime working in the Prison Service, which cost a considerable amount of money and led to inefficient and ineffective ways of operating the service. At one point, the level of overtime in the Prison Service was very close to that in the Garda Síochána, which is a much bigger force. I can come back to that point later in our discussions.