Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Prisons Bill 2006.

Before commenting on the detail of the legislation, I must deal with two points raised by Deputy Burton. The first of these was her statement that she is surprised that the Tánaiste has taken upon himself the power of a planning authority to grant planning permission in respect of large prison developments. That is not my reading of the legislation. As I understand it, a resolution will be placed before both Houses of the Oireachtas and an Act of the latter will be required. In such circumstances, the Oireachtas and not the Minister of the day will be the planning authority. It might suit the Deputy to personalise matters in respect of the Tánaiste but everyone knows that she is not being accurate and that she is being somewhat mischievous.

The Deputy has also blown out of the water all credibility regarding objections to Thornton Hall by local residents. I was amazed by her comments in this regard. She actually stated that it would have been better to build the children's hospital rather than the prison at Thornton Hall. Let us analyse the logic of her comments. The Deputy is stating that people would have been happy with the children's hospital. In such circumstances, the arguments they made regarding consultation and the assessment, price, zoning and usage of sites would be of no relevance if such a hospital were built on the site.

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