Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On a number of fronts, I am very disappointed with the reply. As I said, the roll-out of the vaccine in prisons has been deferred, even though, as the Minister of State pointed out, they are congregated settings. The greatest risk has always been that, inadvertently, the virus would be allowed to enter prisons through people who come to prisons every day providing services, including prison staff and the people who provide all the other services within prisons, many of which were curtailed during the lockdowns. I would hope that now that the vaccines have started being rolled out, that would be seen through to completion, expeditiously, for every person in prison who wants a vaccine and also for prison staff. Anything else would be unsatisfactory.

Allowing for that, I pointed out a model whereby there was a much better practice and a much more expeditious reopening of visits, namely, that relating to nursing homes, which, in the main, involved the older cohort of society whose members are very vulnerable. We knew that statistically and still we were able to reopen visits reasonably soon after vaccination. Do not tell me, after all these months, that we are drawing up another plan. I do not want to hear about another big master plan being drawn up. It is most frustrating. Prisoners want dates on which they are going to be able to see their loved ones, and their loved ones want dates on which they can see the members of their families in prison. It should not be the case that it might happen at some point in the future on a phased basis. That is not good enough.

Similarly, there is no excuse for not facilitating religious services. We all know how safe they have been in the general populace and how controlled that environment is. There is no reason not to facilitate them. It is totally unfair to put an additional burden of caution on prisons when in society, we balance the other human needs of people in a much fairer way.

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