Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A number of years ago, we would hardly turn on the television in the evening but there was an issue about the conditions in Mountjoy Prison including the argument that everybody was getting drugs into the prison. In the past few years, that bad publicity has dampened down. I visited the prison a year or two ago and it struck me that one of the reasons why it has dampened is because the governor implemented a policy of involving the prisoners in work in the prison, be they painting or maintenance jobs. I must acknowledge the work of the governor, Mr. Edward Whelan. I saw how prisoners did up the showers. It enhanced the self-esteem of the prisoners who bought into the project. As a result, the discontent they felt and the difficulties with them dramatically decreased. This might be why we do not hear the same amount of bad stories about Mountjoy, notwithstanding the fact that our penal system leaves much to be desired. Due to an industrial dispute, it was four and a half years after the centre for young offenders in Mountjoy was built before it was used. I understand it opened up for a period but is now closed.

That leads on to my final point. I was part of a Fine Gael policy on dealing with young offenders. Unfortunately, the media damned the project which involved boot camps but they were really rehabilitation centres. I and a few others visited Warrington outside Manchester in the UK to look at a centre. I would plead with the Department to look at that type of facility for young offenders. It is not an extreme right-wing concept. It is a progressive concept. What struck me when I visited it was the relationship between the prison officers and the prisoners. I saw the letters former prisoners had written to the prison staff thanking them for the period they spent there. Prison officers outlined how young offenders across England wanted to get into the centre. Prisoners there carried out their woodwork, metalwork and plastering. They got up in the morning and made their beds. They had a very strict regime but they bought into it and it helped build up their self-esteem. There are common threads regarding why we have many young offenders. It relates to educational difficulties and offenders feeling that society has let them down, which it has in many respects with regard to the lack of early intervention in education and the bad housing policy in areas like north Dublin, parts of Cork and Limerick and other towns where there is no real concentration on the layout of housing estates.

I ask the Minister to look at the concept of giving young offenders an input into their period in prison to make it progressive rather than regressive. He should visit the centre in the UK and look at the letters written by prisoners who had no male role model in their lives as they grew up. All of a sudden, they bonded with the prison staff who took them on board not as prisoners or offenders but as people who needed direction and education. It benefited them. It was surprising to read the correspondence from the former prisoners in these centres. There are many families with a second or third generation in prison. I used to hear the former governor of Mountjoy Prison, John Lonergan, talk about it continually. He obviously knew the families whom society has failed. The old mechanisms do not work.

I support the concept of the Bill but it must be implemented. We do not want to come back here in a few years' time and find out that the fines are not being collected. It must be proportionate. Where people do not pay them, the community service must be productive. Young offenders and our prison system must be looked at. I will put down parliamentary questions to see if information about the non-payment of maintenance orders is out there because many people are abdicating their responsibilities.

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