Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I refer to the motion on the Adjournment raised by Deputy Gormley, with which I entirely agree. Three weeks ago in the Kevin Street area, an attack occurred on a young gay man who is still in a coma and subsequent attacks on members of the gay community have occurred within that jurisdiction. It is possible that a particular group is involved in racism and attacks on the gay community. It would be worthwhile for the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to investigate the matter.

The crisis in the prison system is out of control and I cannot remember when we last had such a crisis. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform was appointed three years ago, which is the same length of time that we have had an industrial dispute concerning overtime for prison officers. Only two weeks ago the prison officers voted by two to one to reject the offer that was made, largely because of the attitude of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and his megaphone diplomacy, but also because the offer made was very inflexible, which could have been remedied if it had been presented in a proper fashion.

For the past three years the Minister has been trying to save €60 million. In that time he has created mayhem and chaos, and the Irish Prison Service is out of control as a result of his action. He has closed down three prisons, Fort Mitchel in Spike Island, the Curragh Prison and Shanganagh Castle. They have all been lying idle in mothballs for 18 months, with 300 to 400 prison spaces, which otherwise could have been used. At the same time the Minister has paid ten times the market value for land in north County Dublin for a proposed prison to replace Mountjoy.

In the meantime in his reports of this year and last year the inspector of prisons slated the quality of the prison system. He described the appalling conditions that operate in Irish prisons to the extent that he has called for the closure not only of Mountjoy, but also of Limerick and Cork prisons. The overcrowding in Cork Prison is such that it contains double the number of prisoners that it should. Every prison is overcrowded because of the Minister's policy of closing down prisons. He now proposes going a step further to punish prison officers for rejecting his inflexible offer and his megaphone diplomacy by privatising the prison escort service, as proposed in a Bill just published. This is outrageous behaviour. He now proposes to close down two more prisons, Shelton Abbey and Loughan House, and turn them into private institutions requiring more people to be recruited and paid.

The Minister is presiding over a Prison Service that is out of control. His ego has decided that city hall will not be defeated, which is his attitude to prison staff. This represents a red rag to a bull. Instead of engaging in diplomacy in industrial relations he is using confrontation. The Minister should get a grip of himself and recognise that he is more than half way through his term in office. Throughout those three years we have had a crisis in the prison service. We again have a revolving door system, with prisoners being released early because of lack of places for them. Prison services such as education cannot proceed because of doubling up in most cells. This means that we have a worse prison service than we had in the last century, which is reflected in the recently published report of the inspector of prisons, Dermot Kinlen.

While I hope I will not need to raise this issue again, I fear I will need to do so. I would not be surprised if by the time the Government reaches the end of its term of office, in addition to the three prisons the Minister has already closed down and the two he is about to close, one or two more are closed down. He frequently claims to be doing wonderful things to modernise the Prison Service when in reality he is putting it back to the Stone Age.

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