Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I wish to share my time with Deputy Ó Snodaigh. I ask the Leas-Cheann Comhairle to notify me when five minutes have concluded.

Dr. T. K. Whitaker goes on to state: "it seems that it is not just the penal system, but the whole social system that needs attention, directed towards minimising the alienation from moral and constructive living of so many who, missing out on good parenting and schooling, fall victim to drug abuse and gravitate to crime as a route to peer acclaim and easy money". I grew up in a tough working class community in which those who did not make it through the education system often ended up in prison and in jail. I know many parents, particularly mothers, of people who ended up on the wrong side of the law. The Minister can say "There but for the grace of God" and in recent years, some of his party got to hang their hats in Mountjoy, albeit for a brief period, because they were on the wrong side of the law in their performance as politicians.

The Minister's arrogance about the destruction of Dóchas and the decision to relocate the Central Mental Hospital from Dundrum to Thornton Hall ill-becomes him. Speaking down the years, Dr. Whitaker has had a point on which, with some humility, all Members could ponder. Dóchas is the Irish for hope and the Dóchas women's prison attempts to rehabilitate women. Obviously the Minister has lost the run of himself in respect of this project and rehabilitation has dropped out of the scheme. I will repeat to the Minister what I stated previously, that the proposal to use a prison van to carry visitors out to the prison is an exercise in despair. The families who travel on whatever prison transport the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform provides, be it a van or a bus, are subject to the most incredible pressure by the peers of serious criminals who are incarcerated. They are under pressure to smuggle drugs and to do deals.

In a country of Ireland's size, it makes no sense to have a super prison unless, in the context of the public private partnership arranged by the Minister, who will not provide details on the finances, the Government ultimately has an agenda to privatise the prison. The Green Party Members, who are absent from the debate tonight, stated in their election manifesto and at numerous public meetings that the prison at Thornton Hall would not go ahead. The silence and absence of its Members is an eloquence of what their word and bond means.

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