Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I am amazed to hear that considering the war of words that has surrounded his professional, competent role as Inspector of Prisons and the current Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. His long-sought requirement to have the office placed on a statutory basis will finally be fulfilled in this legislation.

The Bill sets out a new regime for the planning provisions for new prisons, something that will require a degree of teasing out and careful examination. I am sorry the Minister is leaving because I have some things to say to him. Perhaps he will have an opportunity to read my contribution subsequently. I share Deputy Jim O'Keeffe's view on the planning process that it should be separate from the line Minister. The notion that a structure to deal with the planning issues would be devised by the line Minister on a case-specific basis should set alarm bells ringing. Planning is a professional, national and integrated job — I say that as a former Minister for the Environment and Local Government. If there is a requirement for specific, strategic, national projects to be dealt with in a separate way from run of the mill planning, so be it, but they should not be devised on a case by case basis by the line Minister to suit his or her personal requirements or the pressures of his or her agenda. That is fundamentally wrong.

This Bill will expand the statutory range of prison rules. It does such momentous things as outlawing the bread and water diet, which one would have assumed was done away with some time ago. It applies an appeals mechanism and I share again Deputy Jim O'Keeffe's view of the knee-jerk reaction of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform that if a panel of people is to deal with anything in the criminal justice area, it must be composed of lawyers. There is no need for that. It should not be the norm that the only people competent to deal with issues such as the appeals board that will be established under this legislation would have to be practising solicitors or barristers. There are other people in the social science area who have the expertise to suit that job, often much more suitable than people who happen to practise law but who may never have practised criminal law and who are entirely unsuitable.

The Bill also allows for the outsourcing of prisoner escort services, a fulfilment of the big stick policy the Minister had. He indicated that 94% of prisoner escorts are carried out by the new State-run scheme he has put in place and I welcome that. I will not resist the enactment of a provision that it could be outsourced but I welcome the notion that an in-house mechanism is working effectively. The experience of outsourcing in Britain has not been good. Some of the security services provided on a commercial basis to the prison service in Britain leave a lot to be desired and in some cases have put the general public at risk, something we must recognise, particularly when moving dangerous or violent prisoners between prisons and courts or any other places. I hope it is simply an enabling provision and that it will not be used by the current Minister or any of his successors.

There are some issues I wish to address in detail. The placing of the Inspector of Prisons on a statutory basis is long overdue. I have no doubt the delay in doing this, which has been requested for years on end, was the result of the ongoing friction between the current inspector, the former distinguished Mr. Justice Kinlen, and the Minister. The public friction and disrespect the Minister showed the inspector is to be regretted. The failure of the Minister to heed the repeated findings and recommendations of Mr. Kinlen caused huge frustration for the inspector and would have driven lesser people out of the job. Not only were the reports he produced buried but when they did come into the public domain, they were not acted upon.

In August, The Irish Times used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to the reports of various prison visiting committees. They painted a very disturbing picture of conditions in Irish prisons. People remember the litany of horror stories about the prison system that dominated the media for some weeks. Concern was expressed by these visiting committees. These were the considered views not of some radical, revolutionary left wing groups but by individuals appointed by the current Fianna Fáil-PD Government or its immediate predecessor and they painted a realistic but disturbing picture of conditions in many of our prisons. Most depressing of all were the conclusions that in some instances conditions were getting worse. They were not part of an historic underspend or aged facilities which were getting worse. It is a shameful situation that these reports lay in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform for 18 months before a freedom of information request from a national newspaper prised them loose and made them public.

In a single week last summer, there were four serious violent attacks in the prisons. Violence occurs regularly in prisons but these were of such moment that they grabbed national headlines. The most shameful of them was the sad murder of Gary Douch. It took place, as we all read at the time, in circumstances that were almost beyond belief. The details read like something that would happen in a backward 19th century country rather than in what purports to be a modern 21st century European republic. The circumstances that surrounded that tragic death brought shame on all those who have responsibility to overview State institutions and a substantial response was required. The Minister indicated he had no antipathy at all to the Inspector of Prisons, Mr. Justice Dermot Kinlen. However, the inspector's reported comments highlight his deep frustration. He stated, "The present attitude [of the Minister] is frightening and fascist". I have never heard words such as these used about a Minister previously. They indicated the frustration of a former distinguished judge following the repeated ignoring of his reports and recommendations on the prison system. It needs to be ensured that humanity reigns in our prisons. The punishment meted out in the name of the State is loss of liberty, as prescribed by law, not degrading conditions that deny basic human rights. The squalor that surrounded the death of Gary Douch was a denial of basic human rights. The squalor in which his last hours were spent beggars belief and it is a cause of shame.

A fundamental review, therefore, is needed of the role of prisons and imprisonment. The Minister published the Fines Bill yesterday and all the national newspapers reported that it would reduce the prison population and provide for the attachment of earnings so that those who are incarcerated for the non-payment of fines would be removed from the system. However, that is the not case. Two fines Bills are promised. The minimalist Bill, which provides for fines to be paid by instalment, was published yesterday but the Bill dealing with the attachment of earnings and fundamental changes that will reduce the prison population has not been published and we do not know when that will happen.

The governor of Mountjoy Prison, John Lonergan, has often repeated the view that most of his clients come from a handful of postal districts in Dublin. Is that not a sad testament to the reality that from the time they enter primary school, we can identity who is likely to end up in prison? Similar to the breaking the cycle scheme introduced by the Department of Education and Science, a plan is needed to break the cycle of imprisonment which young people consider to be the norm because they expect to end up in prison and do not fear it, considering it to be a natural progression in their lives.

The facts relating to imprisonment in the State are hugely disquieting. A report published late last year by the UCD institute for criminology, the first of its kind in Ireland, found that more than one quarter of the State's prisoners return to jail within a year of their release. The report found that the vast majority of prisoners are young, unemployed, petty criminals rather than violent or gangster figures. People who pose a threat to the community or who are a menace to their neighbours and are violent or who push drugs on our streets deserve to be locked up but they do not comprise the majority of the prison population. The report highlighted that 56% of prisoners were jailed for minor offences such as fine defaulting and motor offences and the majority serve less than three months. Offences such as fine defaulting clog up more than half of prison places because of the failure to attach earnings and to ensure people who owe a few hundred or thousand euro in fines do not end up in jail.

The report studied 19,955 inmates who had been released from prison. A total of 85% of those imprisoned for defaulting on fines were back in jail within four years. This is frustrating because it is not a cheap option. My colleague, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe, instanced the average cost of keeping a prisoner in jail for a year at €90,000. However, the most recent figures are staggering. The average cost per year per prisoner ranges from €87,700 in Cork Prison, €84,800 in Cloverhill Prison, €75,800 in Limerick Prison and €85,300 in the Midlands Prisons to €100,400 in Mountjoy Prison while 56% of inmates are jailed for non-payment of fines. In addition, the high security prisons are even more expensive. It costs €240,700 per year to keep a prisoner in Portlaoise Prison, which is higher than the salary of a Minister. This is funded by the taxpayer but no cost benefit analysis of this expenditure has been carried out. Is value for money achieved by locking people up for non-payment of fines, particularly when they have lost their liberty? How can the State justify imprisoning a person in Mountjoy Prison at a cost in excess of €100,000 for the non-payment of a few hundred euro in fines?

My Fine Gael colleague referred to his own fines Bill, which would provide for the attachment of earnings or social welfare benefits and the imprisonment only of those who deserve to be there because they are a threat and danger to the community. The UCD survey demonstrated that 7,540 people — 21 people a day — were committed to prison for failure to pay fines in each of the past four years.

With regard to the need to build a new prison, the Minister has designed a unique planning regime and lobbed it into this Bill. A good case has been made for moving Mountjoy Prison, which is a Dickensian institution. The circumstances surrounding the death of Gary Douch last year made harrowing reading. The fact that anybody could be confined in such awful conditions in the prison's basement should ring alarm bells on the need for reform.

Parts of the prison are of good quality, such as the Dóchas Centre, on which a lot of money was spent. The centre is a fine environment to house prisoners but I remind Members that the incarceration of women is a recent development in this country. Until 20 years ago, only a handful of women were ever locked up. Have matters changed so fundamentally that, as the Minister claimed this morning, Dóchas is not big enough? Why are the women being incarcerated? Their cases should be carefully investigated.

While Dóchas may work, nobody would cry salty tears if much of Mountjoy was closed. However, the Minister's approach to the issue was shocking and wrong. According to the accepted popular view, the price paid for Thornton Hall was staggeringly excessive. My Green Party colleague, Deputy Boyle, cited figures for land sales in similar areas of north County Dublin ranging from €19,000 to €34,000 per acre. The price paid for Thornton Hall was €29.9 million, or €200,000 per acre. Deputy Boyle quoted an assessment by an accountant with 40 years of experience in the estate agency business which claimed the price paid for the site, at an estimated eight times the going rate, was grossly above the market price. Whether one accepts the assessment of that accountant or of others who have estimated the price paid as being at least twice the going rate, the State is popularly accepted to have gotten a very poor deal. The Minister, who is a member of a party which prides itself on value for money, low taxation and ensuring the public purse is well-maintained, revealed an extraordinarily lax approach to purchasing land for a major facility. I do not doubt I will have a further opportunity to develop my thoughts on that matter on Committee Stage but I am concerned that the Minister has handcrafted his own process for planning this issue and I would like him to give a few clear answers in his conclusion to this Second Stage debate. He should outline the process and timeframe he envisages for the completion of the Thornton Hall project. When will irrevocable decisions be made which could preclude an incoming Government from reviewing the matter from a value for money perspective?

The Bill provides for an expansion to the statutory basis for prison rules. The issue of drugs in prisons was raised by a previous speaker. Last year, the Minister made much play about making our prisons drug free, although the letter read into the record by my Fine Gael colleague reveals that to be almost farcical because drugs are readily available in our prisons. I have no illusion that it will be easy to achieve the objective of keeping prisons drug free or that difficult decisions could be avoided. Other than those thrown over the wall in St. Patrick's or Mountjoy, most drugs are physically passed through intimate contact by wives, girlfriends, partners and other family members. Clearly, the only way to be absolutely certain drugs are not passed in that manner is to restrict intimate contact but I would have the gravest of problems with such an approach because, if people are to be incarcerated for years on end, the notion that they could never touch their children or have intimate contact with their partners is inhumane. However, a regime is needed which allows people to live in a drug free prison environment. I have been contacted by parents who explained that it was impossible for their offspring to avoid contact with drugs in the prison system. Most people are scandalised by that fact. It cannot be acceptable that people who are not drug dependent before entering prison become dependent while incarcerated. The objective will be difficult and challenging to achieve but we must lay out a strategy for doing so.

What is the status of the addiction counselling service? Last year, it was promised that such a service would go to tender. Have those tenders been fulfilled, how many of the 14 prisons and places of detention offer addiction counselling services and to what level are they operating?

I am informed that methadone is only prescribed to people who were taking it before they entered prison. Is it possible for people who want to come off heroin to have access to methadone while in prison?

Is it true that people are incarcerated who have been clinically diagnosed with severe psychiatric illnesses? How many people are awaiting transfer to the Central Mental Hospital or other clinical setting and are in prison because places are not available for them?

What is the current position with regard to young offenders? Last October, the Committee of Public Accounts examined and reported on the detention centre in Lusk. God knows, the cost of detention centres is horrendous, yet the Tánaiste is now flying another kite with regard to incarcerating asylum seekers in detention centres. I hope he puts them in cheaper places than the ones we currently have. In its report, the Committee of Public Accounts found that a unit designed to hold young offenders which cost €4.7 million was unoccupied because of a turf war between the Departments of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Education and Science. This unit was closed at a time when the courts could not find appropriate places of detention for young offenders. The same report found that maintaining a child in the Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre for one year cost a mind boggling €507,407. Is early intervention to prevent children from following that path not justified on the most basic grounds of cost effectiveness, never mind the humanitarian and societal reasons?

This is a modest Bill which has spent a long time in gestation. I hope the low priority afforded in this Chamber and this country to prison reform will be addressed and that the debate on Committee Stage will improve the appalling conditions identified by the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention and the prison visiting committees over many years.

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