Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is not being proposed as a virtue. All of us agree that the optimum is single cell occupancy but that cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future. New prisons will be built in Cork and Limerick as the Deputy rightly said, but because of overcrowding in the current prisons we will simply alleviate that with the new buildings.

I am sure this will be a great relief to people there because the accommodation is not good and it will improve the circumstances in both prisons. Nevertheless, unless the Government embarks on a massive prison-building programme or releases almost 1,000 people from the prisons, it will not be able to provide single-cell occupancy within the foreseeable future. I do not put this forward as a virtue but simply state the facts.

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