Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I come back to the net point of the record of prison building. The record of Deputy Rabbitte's party is that one of its first decisions in Government was to stop the prison building programme. In 1997, because there was a crisis in the prison building situation, we started a prison building programme. One cannot build prison spaces overnight. It takes time.

The tender process for the PPP was entered into on the basis of confidentiality and Department of Finance guidelines, to which we must adhere.

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