Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 21 – Prisons
Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts Special Report No. 93: Annualised Hours of the Prison Service

9:00 am

Mr. Noel Waters:

The average has fallen back since 2015. It is now in the order of about 9% across the country which, when broken down and the number of staff in all institutions taken into account, is on average about 24 hours on a yearly basis. It varies very significantly from institution to institution. The big closed institutions tend to have few or no write-off hours because there is a huge amount of work going on there with prisoners moving in and out, hospital visits, court visits, and so on. A big write-off arises in respect of the open centres, Shelton Abbey and Loughan House. Does Mr. Donnellan want to speak on that?