Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity this legislation affords to revisit the specific matter of the Thornton Hall development and the general issue of prison policy. However, the introduction of the legislation at this time, only a week after we debated the resolution in committee and put several questions to the Minister on matters of concern to the Opposition, shows up the defects in our parliamentary system. In the intervening period between the passing of the resolution and the introduction of the legislation, we hoped the Minister might be in a position to report progress in dealing with the issues raised at meetings of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights by local interested parties and groups concerned with prison policy.

Instead, we are proceeding once again on the basis of Dáil numbers rather than with a view to meeting those concerns. It is regrettable that the Minister's approach has been characterised by intransigence and a refusal to engage meaningfully with the many stakeholders and concerned parties which have made representations at committee meetings and by way of submissions. In recent weeks, for example, the committee has heard the views of the Irish Penal Reform Trust and the Rolestown and St. Margaret's Action Group. Events and briefings have been organised by bodies such as the Irish Mental Health Coalition highlighting the flaws and dangers inherent in the Government's approach. Only yesterday, Professor Ian O'Donnell, respected director of UCD's institute of criminology, criticised the Government for the lack of knowledge and informed debate that is driving its policy on super-prisons such as Thornton Hall. He observed that the Government is clinging to the Thornton Hall project "despite substantial reservations about the scale, location and composition of the proposed cluster of institutions."

Despite the chorus of concern from experts in the areas of penal policy and mental health policy, the Minister refuses to budge from his entrenched position. He has not budged since we first had an opportunity to debate the motion in plenary session of this House before it went to committee. Aside from his party colleagues, the Minister would have trouble finding anyone to agree with a prison scheme that proposes to detain asylum seekers in contravention of international best practice and to take women prisoners from Dóchas, which is considered the only functional prison in the State and for which there has been a capital spend of more than €33 million, and relocate them to a super-prison. I am sure the Minister has few supporters outside his party for his proposal to remove the mentally ill from the existing special facility in Dundrum and to house them on the same campus as serious criminals. He will find little support for his proposal to incarcerate minors in a prison complex designed for adults, which is a breach of international law. I recently heard him reiterate his intention to construct the proposed buildings at Lusk. However, in these times of changed finances, the Minister saw fit to tell us there was not a red cent for a capital project in the HSE north-eastern area. Can he assure us that the necessary funding is secured and ring-fenced for the youth offenders project at Lusk? If he cannot, we are facing a considerable breach of international law and considered best practice.

However, despite the reservations raised, the Minister proceeds to steamroll this legislation through. Despite the absence of support from outside the Fianna Fáil Party, he insists on ploughing on. The Green Party's view is on record, as are the comments of some Fianna Fáil backbenchers. We know what Deputy Finian McGrath, who enjoys favoured status with Fianna Fáil, thinks of this issue. The Minister's combative approach is not the way to deliver good policies or good law. It is a pity he has not adopted a more open-minded and consensus driven approach. That would have resulted in a more acceptable proposal than the one before the House today.

The manner in which successive Ministers for Justice, Equality and Law Reform have handled issues of prison policy in the past decade does not inspire confidence. This country has been embarrassed on more than one occasion when respected international monitors such as the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture have examined our prisons and found them to be dangerous and Dickensian. Next month, the United Nations will examine the State's progress in implementing an international covenant on civil and political rights. The findings are unlikely to reflect positively on Fianna Fáil's prison policies in the past decade. Just this week the failure of the Government's much vaunted "drug-free prison" policy was highlighted in a report published yesterday. According to the drug policy action group, Government policy in respect of drugs in prisons has been an abject failure. In fact, since this policy was introduced there has been an increase in drug abuse in prisons combined with a significant rise in drug-related violence and intimidation.

I recall, as I am sure all Members will, the statements of former Ministers for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr. Michael McDowell, and the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, that the eradication of drugs within the prison regime was a priority of Government. In February last, The Irish Times reported that prisoners had tested positive for drugs 40,000 times over the past three years and detection rates were as high as 75% in some of our prisons.

In its most recent annual report, the prison chaplains state: "The misuse of drugs continues to be a major problem in most of our prisons. Many people will in fact have been introduced to drugs initially while they were in prison." It is a shocking indictment of our prison system that people who enter without a drug problem can actually acquire one and be dependent on drugs by the time they are released into the community.

The prison chaplains further point to the fact that drug offences are actually the reason many are incarcerated in the first place. What the Minister is proceeding with today, as he was proceeding with last week in the committee, is the bricks and mortar solution of building bigger prisons and providing more spaces. It is all concrete and bricks and mortar and nothing in terms of a change in policy from within and the manner in which those who are sentenced to terms of imprisonment are treated.

The limited and ad hoc availability of drug treatment programmes within prisons is a national disgrace. At present, only nine prisoners at a time can avail of a special six-week addiction treatment programme in Mountjoy. Prisoners seeking drug-free landings to help combat their addictions are denied the facility. It cannot be provided. Has the Minister indicated that in the new super prison the regime will be any different? What increase in services will be provided in the new super prison? What increased resources will be committed to ensure there will be education, training, rehabilitation, medical facilities and drugs detox? What is lacking is an enlightened approach.

A realistic and enlightened approach to dealing with the drug problem would have been an increase in security measures and rehabilitation places, but instead we have a few empty gestures in terms of security and drug rehabilitation places which are in a disgracefully short supply. The rates for habitual criminals are shocking as the Minister's officials will inform him. I hope they are the same officials who were spinning last week about legislation borrowed from other jurisdictions. I doubt if those people, respected senior officials in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, were spinning political lines on the Minister's behalf. We will return to that issue before the night is out.

Half of all prisoners re-offend within four years of release, while 27% are back in prison within one year of release. In effect, the taxpayer is footing a bill of just under €100,000 per prisoner per annum to maintain the current system and the Minister's response is bricks and mortar. Our current prisons are in breach of international human rights standards with particular reference to violence and over-crowding. Figures published last year indicate that more than 700 prisoners were under protective custody for their own safety in prisons out of a total prison population of less than 3,500. Yet, while the Minister is proceeding with the new Thornton Hall development, there is no indication that any of these issues will be addressed.

Mr. Justice Kinlen's report has been referred to here time and again. There has been no response on the part of the Government to his stated view that the prison system is dysfunctional and lacking in appropriate psychiatric, educational and rehabilitation services. The penal system over which the Minister is presiding is a total failure. That is not according to me but to national and international monitors, yet we are expected to trust the Minister's approach to Thornton Hall, with which few agree and one that is less than inspiring.

I cannot accept that we will build Thornton Hall to turn it into a super-sized crime academy where prisoners are locked away with no effort made to persuade them away from a life of crime. Thornton Hall must be part of a new approach to prisoners, characterised by a major focus on rehabilitating serious criminals. The new prison must not become a place where the current trends will continue but in a rural setting and behind the mature trees, of which the Minister speaks.

It is regretted that the Minister has, once again, failed to deal with the local concerns. He mentioned the Farrelly report, which we read having been furnished with a copy by the Department. The Farrelly report is merely a list of complaints; it does not offer any recommendations or solutions. It merely lists what we already know, that is, the submissions. To say that Mr. Farrelly acted objectively in all of this may have been the case, but his terms of reference were so narrow and deficient that all he did was summarise the observations as received.

The Minister said a small number of people are in prison for non-payment of fines, but the fact is that there are more people in prison for theft and shop-lifting than for violent crimes. While I do not disagree with the figures for civil matters, such as non-payment of fines, there is a serious issue with our prisons being populated by people for shop-lifting and theft and other offences that in the scale of things can be regarded as less than serious.

It is most regrettable that in the new process introduced a few years ago we did not engage in the type of debate that legislation should have facilitated and, perhaps, would have facilitated if there was a will on the part of the Government to engage. Rather than engage, the Minister stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the role of the stakeholders and the comments of the local people. I ask the Minister at this late stage to revise his approach which, in the circumstances, is less than helpful.

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