Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

Select Committee on Justice and Equality

Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (Further Revised)
Vote 21 - Prisons (Further Revised)
Vote 22 - Courts Service (Further Revised)
Vote 24 - Justice and Equality (Further Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Further Revised)
Vote 41 - Policing Authority (Further Revised)

Photo of Clare DalyClare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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This is a major area and most of my questions come under this Vote. I will see how we get on taking them together.

My first question is on the office of the Inspector of Prisons. I notice a substantial reduction in the budget for this year. I wonder what is going on in that regard. We have a situation now where the Inspector of Prisons has a smaller budget than the Irish film classification office. Given that we have no prisoner complaints mechanism, this is an incredibly important role. I wonder why the budget of the Inspector of Prisons has been reduced to under €500,000, which is a small amount of money, yet a sum of €251,000 has been allocated to the judicial appointments commission and the judicial council, neither of which has been set up yet, which makes it doubly insulting. A number of groups have called for extra resources for the office of the Inspector of Prisons. She undertook an investigation into alleged unauthorised surveillance of prisoners and there was a call for her to be given extra resources to carry that out. I know from a response to a parliamentary question that she has finished the report. Will the Minister publish the report? When are we going to see it? Has it been sent to the Data Protection Commission and did the Inspector of Prisons get extra resources for that report? What is the reason for the drop in her budget?

I have a number of questions for other areas under this Vote but that is my only one of this topic.