Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Community service is therapeutic, good for the State, has a very strong punitive effect, is a humbling experience and saves the State a fortune. The cost of keeping a person in prison is outrageous at €1,700 per week. It is mad. All of the research shows prisons do not work. I had a script which I was going to present. It was pretty good and I compliment Rachel Ann Hynes in my office who helped me to put it together and did such a good job on it, but I will have to keep it for another day.

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