Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I am grateful to the Deputy for tabling these amendments. As for appointments, I am glad the Deputy has acknowledged that I have not engaged in cronyism. I wish to make clear that the office of Inspector of Prisons is an important public role and the person who takes it is expected to be independent in the discharge of his or her functions. I do not believe any successor of mine would appoint an unsuitable person. However, it is sometimes difficult to induce suitable persons to enter their names into a competitive process. If the process is open and transparent, the fact that one might be rejected or whatever makes it difficult to induce people to come forward. This is a highly significant problem. If one wants to get someone good to do a job, one cannot ask that person to accept the job and state that although one wants him or her to do it, he or she will be obliged to go before a transparent process and engage in a competition with others; and that the newspapers will find out about it and would discover whether the person was rejected. Many suitable people will decide they do not wish to go through such a process and do not wish to have the public querying the reason they were unsuccessful. Consequently, we should retain the current position.

Moreover, since my appointment as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform I have been extremely careful, in all appointments that I have made, to be free from political bias. I have appointed people of all political opinions and of none to various positions. In such circumstances, it would be a mistake to require all appointees to undergo a competitive process that would involve public awareness that people had applied for a job and had been rejected for it. This would result in a lesser standard of appointee.

The Deputy suggests there should be a minimum term of three years and a maximum term of five years. I am against this because there may be occasions on which someone who is doing a good job requests a further year or whatever. Alternatively, someone such as a High Court judge who may be available in 12 months' time may ask to keep the post open for him or her for a short time. The flexibility that would be lost with the acceptance of a minimum term is invaluable.

As for staff and resources, such a statutory provision is not required. Were the inspector to find that his or her statutory resources are inadequate, he or she can say so. There would be strong pressure on the Minister to do the right thing by the inspector. A point in favour of the current incumbent is that he maintains an extremely lean operation. Inspection requires no more than a small and lean bureaucracy surrounding it and the main thing is that inspections should be carried out. This requires personal inspections on the part of the Inspector of Prisons, as inspections by persons other than the inspector would carry less weight.

I echo what Deputy Howlin stated about the Gary Douch death which, as the Deputy knows, caused me profound anxiety and worry and it is with regard to such issues that we must remember the role of the inspector is important. The "lock them up and throw away the key and who cares how they suffer" mentality is counter-productive because almost everybody comes out sometime and if they are treated in a sub-human way or we allow them to be treated by other prisoners in a sub-human way, we will pay the price afterwards. This is why we must have a decent standard in our prisons.

See this speech in context