Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

For a distinguished lawyer, the Minister can display a certain lack of logic from time to time. If the real reason for closing down Mountjoy Prison and acquiring the new greenfield site was to do with in-cell sanitation, which is lacking in the slopping out process, why did the Minister indicate to me in a reply to a question last year that approximately 400 cases were being taken to the European Court of Human Rights regarding Portlaoise, Cork and Limerick prisons, with perhaps a few cases regarding Mountjoy? If that was the Minister's real concern, he should have started in Cork, Portlaoise and Limerick.

Is it the case that there is a total lack of penal policy in this area? In the past eight years, prison accommodation has increased from 2,000 to 3,200 but at the same time the Minister has closed down three prisons. Which direction is the Minister going in? Is he opening up more spaces to accommodate more prisoners or closing down perfectly good available space for the most dubious reasons? The National Economic and Social Forum report has been disregarded.

What is the real reason for this purchase and this particular prison? How is it the case that the committee the Minister just mentioned had a presentation on the Thornton Hall site on 26 January and on that same day it made the decision to purchase it? There was no lead-in time. Nobody from the committee examined the site, other than the auctioneer, yet the committee bought it hook, line and sinker for ten times the normal market value. Will the Minister explain the reason the committee was allowed jettison the required conditions for purchase in respect of cost? Cost and public transport were no obstacles, even though they were written in as necessary conditions for a greenfield site. How did that happen? How was that a valid decision in those circumstances if the main conditions outlined to the committee had been jettisoned in regard to this particular site?

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