Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

He is written to or emailed - it is usually a registered letter - to tell him that he did not turn up for work and his salary has been deducted. I do not think this is happening to every other prison officer who gets leave from local line management, who are not the problem here. He obviously has issues and has raised them in a protected disclosure, the timelines of which, as Deputy MacSharry has pointed out, have been contradicted with regard to how they have been dealt with. His situation has to be mediated so that he can continue to work or whatever else the mediation process will involve. The issues in his protected disclosure have to be dealt with comprehensively. There are issues relating to the process by which the Prison Service deals with protected disclosures. I do not think anyone, based on the information and conversations I have had with him and others, would feel comfortable in the Prison Service in making a protected disclosure in any way, shape or form. I know they would not. That is not right. It is completely wrong. There is a situation in Irish prisons where prison guards who do their job of finding drugs, mobile phones etc. feel that they get penalised because it looks bad for a prison for things to be found, the governor does not like that the statistics for these findings are getting higher, and then comes down on the prison officer. That is insane. I am telling the public that that is the reality in some cases.

There are three issues. There is the way the individual is dealt with and the need for mediation, which should be done quickly. I hope the Department of Justice and Equality is watching this. The issues in the protected disclosure are severe and serious, need to be dealt with, and correlate with other people who have had issues in the Prison Service. The third issue is the process by which the Irish Prison Service, supervised by the Department of Justice and Equality, has dealt with this, and the contradictions as outlined by Deputy MacSharry and me. That last bit is quite serious. The people watching this need to know that, as a committee, we will deal with these issues. Before we finish this term, if we do not see progress on these items, I will ask this committee for support to have the Irish Prison Service and the Department of Justice and Equality sitting here in the first meeting we have after the recess.