Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We believe this is an incredibly serious situation. I note the Minister's comments that overall progress has been made with conditions at Maghaberry Prison, adjudicated as one of the worst prisons in Europe. In actual fact, that progress is quite slow. It is our experience that developments in the segregated wings have actually gone backwards. We do not say that in any way lightly or flippantly. This is based on the experience of five years of visits, the input from those who did the Stocktake agreement, the ICRC, which tried to facilitate a process, the Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and even the Minister's own Northern Ireland office. All of these parties have tried to intervene but there are two essential problems.

The reason why the prison forum failed is because arbitrary and non-serious issues were thrown into the mix when the real issues in the room were always controlled movement and strip searching. Without addressing those, there cannot be any movement onwards.

We note the Minister repeated his comment that the staff feel threatened. Again, we have to go back to the response the prisoners would make. They claim they signed up to the agreements in August 2010 and demonstrated good faith. There have been no physical incidents against any prison officer in that area, as distinct from the general body of the prison population. What we have is a sham process, which is actually contributing to a difficult situation on the ground, and will not be solved until these issues are addressed.

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