Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

This motion would be regarded in any functioning democracy as a hugely controversial one. It is not controversial because it facilitates the closure of the unsuitable, out-of-date prison environment at Mountjoy and the creation of more appropriate prison places elsewhere. That central proposition is not contested.

The motion is immensely controversial for several reasons. When passed by both Houses, it will authorise the construction of the largest, most expensive prison in the history of the State at a manifestly unsuitable location. The manner of purchase of this site was unorthodox, unwise and did not comply with established procedures. The cost of the site at Kilsallaghan at €200,000 per acre exceeded the variable cost of land in the area by a factor of between 2 and 5. The community at Kilsallaghan is not an appropriate location for a prison. The international trend is away from large scale prisons. There is little evidence of a more enlightened or imaginative penal policy informing the largest decision in prison provision since the foundation of the State.

There are two further reasons this motion the Dáil is being asked to endorse is controversial. First, the developer who is the preferred bidder under the public private partnership arrangement to deliver the new prison is the same developer who last week withdrew from a similar arrangement with Dublin City Council to build five different housing developments. Second, it is Government policy to relocate the Central Mental Hospital from Dundrum to Thornton Hall, although the wisdom of such a decision is vehemently contested by expert opinion.

The value for money issue is decided. The horse has bolted and the taxpayer has been taken for a king's ransom. Taking the most modest calculation — that of the Comptroller and Auditor General — it seems the State has paid twice the market value of the land. Put simply, it would appear that having failed to purchase their desired site, the Minister and his agents let it be known they were in the market for a site that might be purchased for up to €30 million. Not surprisingly, they were offered a farm precisely for that amount — 150 acres at Kilsallaghan — even though the instructions to the Office of Public Works were for 80 acres.

The fear now is that having acquired 150 acres, the Government must be seen to attempt to develop it. The prospect of moving the women's prison and the Central Mental Hospital to Thornton Hall, therefore, is held out as the medium-term plan. The Office of Public Works had advised that it would be best to proceed confidentially. Once it became known the State was the client the price it argued would inevitably go up. That advice was ignored. Although Departments must comply with EU procurement directives in acquiring professional services and consultants, that was not done here nor was there a formal contract. There was no competitive tendering for professional services. There was no consistency in the evaluation of the site. As the Comptroller and Auditor General summarised in his 2005 report:

There are a number of respects in which the marks awarded by the site selection committee appear to be inconsistent ... One site got a significantly lower mark than two others in respect of availability of site services, even though the consultants estimated that the cost of provision of water, sewerage and energy services would be higher at the other sites.

There may be compelling reasons the site was identified and purchased in this unorthodox manner but if there are they have not been put into the public domain. It is not difficult to imagine that the purchase of a site for a prison is not exactly a straightforward undertaking. However, one is left with the impression that, at the height of the boom, the sky was the limit, the taxpayer could afford to pay and a deal was sealed that for whatever reason bordered on the reckless.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the man who sat atop this squandering of taxpayers' money was the very man who devoted a large part of his political life to lecturing the rest of us on public spending. It has never been properly explained how he became mired in this decision, one of the most foolhardy purchases in the history of the State. How did he become suckered into it and what kind of Cabinet allowed itself to sanction it? It seems now that in order to put the redundant acres to some use, both the women's prison and, temporarily, places for youth detention, but most seriously of all, the Central Mental Hospital, will be transferred to Kilsallaghan. People concerned with the most successful innovations at Dóchas, the women's prison, believe that the proposed transfer is most unwise and profoundly mistaken in policy terms. People concerned with the Central Mental Hospital today published a well argued report entitled, Patients Not Prisoners, exposing why it is wholly undesirable to uproot such a hospital from its long established communal setting in Dundrum and juxtapose it with a prison in such an isolated setting. The decision to railroad through such a large scale traditional development for the incarceration of prisoners at such an unsuitable location raises the major question as to what extent, if at all, has this massive, new, expensive prison decision been informed by modern thinking in terms of penal policy.

In a recent paper by Paul O'Mahony, the author elaborates on his assertion that our prisons have played a key role in developing a flourishing drugs environment throughout the country. It is estimated that 75% of prisoners have an addiction to drugs or alcohol or both. Mountjoy prison, it can reasonably be said, is the largest drugs treatment centre in the country. However, it cannot reasonably be argued that it is equipped to deal with that challenge.

The annual report of the Irish Prison Service for 2005 shows that 40% of people sentenced to imprisonment received sentences of three months or less; eight out of every ten people sentenced were given terms of less than 12 months. Most prison sentences that year were for crime at the lower end of the scale of gravity and 85% were for non-violent offences. In short, for every ten prisoners serving a sentence for a headline crime such as murder, manslaughter and sexual offences, there are 12 in prison for property crimes without violence. Would it not be more appropriate for the Government and the prison authorities to focus on how the number of prison places might be reduced, and how to extend the use of alternative penalties as a more effective response to those who come before the courts? Should the Government not be focusing on how to wean as many prisoners as possible off the drugs habit rather than fulminating about a drugs-free prison environment that everyone knows is only hot air? Ought the Government not concentrate on how to keep young people out of a prison environment and estranged from the prison mentality? In so far as some provision for the detention of women prisoners is unavoidable, does the Government not agree that the necessary supports should be available to Dóchas to continue to develop along present lines, where it is, as distinct from being housed within the confines of a predominantly male prison? I invite the Minister to respond to what the rapporteur records in his report at paragraph 9.4:

The relocation of the Dóchas Centre is a backward step. The retention of it at its current location must be given further consideration. There appears no purposeful reason for the relocation of both this centre and the Training Unit other than to maximise the revenue realised from a sale of the full Mountjoy site.

This is the opinion of a man who has not committed himself too much in the report. If, as reported, it costs the taxpayer of the order of €100,000 per prisoner per annum , surely even in financial terms alone there is a strong argument to rethink our traditional approach. The latest figures suggest that the average number of prisoners held in Mountjoy is 860. We are being asked essentially to consider a planning proposal that could accommodate up to 2,200 prisoners. The proposed configuration of confinement arrangements at Thornton Hall in terms of penal reform gives rise to many questions. These questions cannot be teased out here but are more appropriate to the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights. The legislative workload on the select committee is disproportionately severe but the joint committee — which has a less onerous workload — ought to give audience to certain interested organisations and persons who have substantial points to make in the period before the Houses of the Oireachtas approve the proposal before us. I have a communication from a Member of the other House, Senator Joe O'Toole, suggesting that the joint committee would make arrangements to hear submissions from interested parties.

In conclusion, Mountjoy is unsuitable to continue as a prison. Although 1,000 new prison places have been provided in the past decade it is perhaps inevitable that the extent of violent crime in our society will make more places necessary. However, Kilsallaghan is a costly folly on the taxpayer and an unwelcome imposition on a community ill suited to cope with such a development.

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