Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have absolute confidence in the management and all the staff and teams working in our prisons. At every stage, they have tried to protect not only themselves but the prisoner population. As I said, for the most part of last year, there were no cases. As virus cases have increased in number, we have, as the Deputy noted, seen what is happening in the community being reflected in prisons. We have also seen a high uptake of vaccines in prisons, as there has been in the community, and this has protected very many people.

There has been an understanding in recent times that we cannot keep people under 24-hour lockdown. When we were in level 5 lockdown, the lockdown in prisons was also very severe. It meant there were no in-person visits and many educational programmes ceased. There has been a move away from that because there is an awareness that we must live with Covid-19. Physical visits resumed in September. Obviously, all of these measures are kept under continuous review to ensure we keep people safe and also respect the human rights of prisoners. I have every confidence the system will do its best in this regard. The Deputy mentioned hospitalisation which I will come back to in my final response.

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