Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It was not a question of me vetting the report but of me reading it and seeing a number of passages in it which I concluded might be defamatory. I submitted them to counsel to decide whether they were publishable by me without risk of me being sued. I was advised by counsel and the Attorney General that I could not publish the report in the form in which it was. I asked that the passages be deleted from the report. The inspector and I eventually agreed on a process whereby the report would be published without those provisions. I did not want to edit him and I sent the report back to him. He is a senior counsel and a judge and I thought he would be in a position to render it publishable without risk of defamation but, in the end, it fell to somebody else to carry that out.

The reports, in so far as it is lawful to publish them, will be and have been published. If I was in the slightest way given to censorship of what was in the reports, all the remarks to which Deputy Howlin and Deputy Cuffe referred, would not appear. Therefore, it cannot be said that I have attempted to censor them in any way, nor would I do so.

The Deputies will appreciate that the Prison Service now has considerably increased accommodation compared with the situation in 1997. All the rehabilitative facilities and programmes were under massive threat as long as the prison budget was being cannibalised by overtime. I tackled that situation, and I am the first Minister for Justice in 20 or 30 years to do so. There is now a sound financial basis in the Prison Service to improve and sustain all those services.

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