Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

As Deputy O'Connor was speaking about the forthcoming election I might remind him of what happened in Dublin West during the last election. The Taoiseach's vanity project was to build a stadium, sports complex and swimming pool on a lovely site in Abbotstown. I supported the sports complex and swimming pool but the Progressive Democrat candidate was opposed to the whole plan. The current Tánaiste supported his opposition and likened the Taoiseach to Ceaucescu with regard to the Abbotstown project. The candidate for Dublin West, who has since moved to Dublin North, sported badges suggesting flushing the Abbotstown project down the toilet as befits a Ceaucescu project.

In that context it is ironic that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform spent €30 million of taxpayers' money on his vanity trip that would do justice to Ceaucescu. It may be on the scale of a Romanian prison in the communist era or an American farm prison. It was acquired at an extraordinary price, far higher than land values in the area. History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. The same Minister is presiding over a project that he would compare to a Ceaucescu project if he was in Opposition. Now that he is the man in command, the rules of engagement have changed.

A section of the Bill gives the Minister power to plug the planning defects in the Thornton Hall prison site retrospectively, which is deeply inappropriate and should be examined in detail and opposed. Regarding Part 4, the Minister proposes to replace the Planning and Development Act with a new structure that makes the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the planning agent for any prison development in the country. Planning arrangements have traditionally have been made through local authorities, followed by appropriate observations and appeal to An Bord Pleanála. An Bord Pleanála retains a key role regarding strategic infrastructure. Why should the Minister become his own planning agent?

The Bill provides for a pseudo consultation process, with a rapporteur who is to receive submissions on prison development. What will the rapporteur do with the submissions? Perhaps he will decorate his living room with them or file them in the Minister's office. The Minister may be minded to glance at them on a light weekend but is under no requirement to take cognisance of them. It is an extraordinary development in Irish planning law.

When the Minister acquired the site at Thornton Hall the provision by which he claimed total exemption from planning law on security grounds was defective in respect of constitutional rights of those with legitimate queries about the prison. It was also defective under EU law, which has detailed strictures on environmental areas and habitat directives. Although he has embarked on a complex process for developing the prison, I am not sure the Minister signed a contract. He might enlighten us on progress on this matter. He is now attempting to pass legislation with retrospective effect and if the issue is challenged in European courts he can claim that he plugged the hole afterwards.

Roscommon County Council learned about the Minister's reputation for planning to its considerable cost. In this case the Minister seeks to take all powers in respect of planning matters. It is an extraordinary, bad precedent to set in this House. The Minister may argue that he will use these powers for the proposed prison in Cork, which is on State land. I understand there are as yet no serious local objections but to deny the normal process of local input is anti-democratic. When will the tenders close? I understand that one party tendering for the prison contract has withdrawn. Who will evaluate the tendering process? Is the Minister the sole authority on all matters concerning prisons?

Serious difficulties have been acknowledged after the fact about road access to the Thornton site. The existing R130 has become problematic. It appears the Minister may need to buy separate land to provide for a new road. Does the Department have an estimate of what that is likely to cost? There have been various suggestions of relative costs attaching to land acquisition for the road. The original assessment does not seem to have taken account of the school on the road to the prison, Kilcoskan. As the Comptroller and Auditor General's report indicates, the prison site was scored relative to several other potential sites but it appears that it was introduced very late, after the procedure was completed and did not meet the criteria which the Minister and the Department had set out in assessing the prison site.

The local residents who have worked hard to make their observations on the prison site known and to have dialogue about this have been continually frustrated in their attempts to get information under the Freedom of Information Act. They have also approached the Committee of Public Accounts where I have seen some of their correspondence, including some from a person with wide experience in land dealing in that part of north county Dublin, who made expert comments on the extraordinary price the Minister paid for an unserviced site. The Department in some instances compared serviced to unserviced sites and in north and west county Dublin, the price differential between the two is significant.

Many women Deputies in this and previous Dáileanna campaigned for the Dóchas centre as a humane location for women prisoners to access, or be with, their young children. The centre has worked well and been favourably reported on, but it is to be swept away and transferred to the new prison. The Minister also plans to transfer the Central Mental Hospital to the site. This will create an American-style super-prison located on the edge of Dublin with poor transport and road links.

Many Members who represent towns with ready road and rail access would be interested in a project such as a large prison because it would bring secure and anchoring employment to their area. The prison in Portlaoise is a major employer in that area. When the development of the prison in Castlerea was delayed, there were signs in the town stating "build our prison now". The location in north county Dublin chosen by the Minister is very different. Although it is on the northern fringe of the M50, it is in quite a remote location with a valuable local heritage of archaeology, flora and fauna.

The area is close to the airport and constantly faces serious difficulties in the face of different forms and proposals for development. It will serve a significant population from Dublin city centre for whom it would be easier to access the prison in Portlaoise, which is on a railway line, or one in any significant town in the greater Dublin region. Many of those towns would welcome such a project.

While the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is moving the prison from Mountjoy to Thornton, his colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, is arguing that the national children's hospital to serve children from around the country should move back into Dublin city centre where there are traffic problems. One might expect that the land on the old prison site would be used for the children's hospital. The children who attend Crumlin and Tallaght hospitals, on the outskirts of the city, are to move into the city centre where there is limited parking. There has been a good children's hospital in Temple Street serving the needs of a particular section of the northside community and a limited number of national specialties.

It is difficult to know how joined-up government operates in this framework. Why did the hospital not go out to the Thornton site? It has easy access for parents driving from areas such as Portlaoise, compared to the difficulty of reaching the Mater Hospital site. Are there any Ministers on the Government benches, either within one or other party or between them, who are capable of joined-up Government and action?

Elements of the Bill are good. The Department and the Minister have promised for a long time to improve video-conferencing facilities and it is good to see it happening here. The statutory basis for the Inspector of Prisons is good, although the Minister generally rubbishes the work of the distinguished inspector. The Minister, the man who knows everything, must explain to the House how it is that there are now significant amounts of drugs in prisons which were relatively drug-free when this Government took office. This is true, for example, of Wheatfield, a state-of-the-art, modern prison. What happened in the Minister's governance of the prison system? Something is going seriously wrong. One of the significant and appropriate fears of parents whose children are sentenced to prison is that if their child does not already have a drug problem, he or she will have one by the time they are released.

There are also statistics relating to the number of people incarcerated, briefly, for the most part, for the non-payment of fines. The cost relating to processing such individuals for short stays in prison is really damaging. It is often poorer, working class people who, by and large, opt to go to jail for the non-payment of fines. It may seem easier to them to serve four days, two weeks or whatever in custody than to get together the money to pay fines of €500 or €600. These people do not appreciate that when they are incarcerated, they acquire, for however brief a period, prison records. Statistics show that many people who were originally imprisoned for the non-payment of fines, subsequently end up being reincarcerated for similar or other offences.

For ten years, we have been promised that a fines Bill would be enacted in order to allow fines to be deducted at source. In the past two weeks, the Tánaiste announced that it will be introduced. He did so after serving as Attorney General for five years and as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform for another five. One of the key reasons that certain types of people, particularly working class individuals, end up with prison records is because there is no system in place in respect of the payment of fines. In the dying days of the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government, which has been in office for almost ten years, this matter will, apparently, finally be addressed.

Like much of the other legislation introduced by the Tánaiste, this Bill has undergone an extraordinarily long gestation period. We sometimes hear about Bills for many years and then, at the last minute, they are hurriedly introduced with hundreds of amendments.

I reiterate that the proposal in this Bill to make the Minister a planning authority is an unusual development in Irish law. It is also wrong. The position of rapporteur to receive submissions in respect of the planning process represents phony consultation of the worst kind and, ultimately, it will be challenged in the courts. I expect that the courts will see through it and probably throw it out.

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