Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I am asking whether the watered-down project at Thornton Hall - the Minister will agree that the new arrangement of building 400 cells for 700 prisoners was not the original project - has survived the bilateral process. Have the moneys been provided and are they assured for this project?

Has any consideration been given in the Minister's Department to the abandonment of this project and given that a very much smaller capacity is being built could it have been done in the conventional way? For example, is it not the case that when this dreadful Government, which has brought us to the stage we are in, was throwing money around like drunken sailors it spent €24 million acquiring a site adjacent to Mountjoy? Did the Department give any consideration to developing that site as an alternative to this monstrosity at an unsuitable location in rural north Dublin? Is there still not time to reconsider his approach?

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