Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

To the best of my recollection, approximately 4,000 people are in prison at any one time, some 0.4% of whom are there for the non-payment of fines. They have refused every exhortation and have probably been obstinate in paying the fines. They are not there because of an inability to pay. Rather, they have adopted a principled position to go to prison instead of paying the fines. We cannot get away from that situation no matter what legislation we pass.

I have outlined the case as regards the purchase. The €10 million over and above the land's purchase would have been spent regardless of which consortium or option we chose. It was necessary to expend that money. It is not dead money. What was done will obviously fit into any subsequent options that are looked at by me. Regarding time scales, I will come back to the Government in a number of weeks and hopefully we will make an announcement.

Our intention would be to have this out for tender sooner rather than later, so that interested parties would have a good period of time over the summer months, when perhaps the building industry is somewhat more dormant than normal, and such parties would have an opportunity to tender. We may then be able to come back to it towards the end of the year.

I do not want to be prescriptive regarding time-scales because this is a major project. There is a difference of hundreds of millions of euro between the original price and that which was finally suggested and we did not accept. We must be given some credit, in that if we had responded and agreed to the type of costs, namely, a 30% increase, people in this House and outside would, rightly, query, particularly in the context of the economic situation generally in this country, why we would go ahead with such a project. We will be looking at all the options in the coming weeks.

See this speech in context