Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 17 January 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 21 - Prisons

9:00 am

Ms Caron McCaffrey:

For example, at any one time within our service we have between 20 and 30 prisoners on the waiting list for the Central Mental Hospital. Those prisoners would be suffering a severe and enduring mental illness and, potentially, be actively psychotic. It would be in those circumstances, Deputy, that that person would not be in a position to leave their cell.