Mr. John Clinton:

To a prison officer on the ground, it is insignificant where the headquarters are. It is of no relevance to me while I am working with prisoners. Decentralisation was a political decision and we were certainly not consulted on it. The main prisons are located in Dublin, but the decision to move was political. I was at a partnership meeting of all the unions in the Irish Prison Service when decentralisation was announced and nobody had known anything about it before that day.

Staff morale is low. We could do an awful lot in the Irish Prison Service to improve things and doing it would automatically improve staff morale.