Tony Kett (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State and this amending legislation, the purpose of which is to amend the Criminal Justice Act 1960 to enable the Minister of the day to be more transparent in his judgments when granting temporary releases. We now know this came about following the Corish judgment in 2000 when it was deemed the Minister did not have the power to refuse to consider to grant temporary releases in certain situations. That obviously highlighted the shortcomings of the law as it existed. It is important – this point has been made by a number of speakers – when considering this legislation that we try to achieve a decent balance. Senator Terry made reference to the victims involved. We must also consider the person who has been incarcerated. We have an overriding obligation to the public at large to ensure that when making decisions about temporary releases we are mindful of the person's readiness to rejoin society.

Apart from looking forward to having visitors, the next best thing a prisoner has to look forward to is the time when he or she will be considered for parole or temporary release. I am sure governors and prison officers are very conscious of that. I am certain they use the carrot of temporary release as a means of keeping order within the prisons. I assume that a person causing trouble within a prison would be disqualified from consideration for temporary release. We have to assume in that context that if the person causes trouble in prison, he or she will do the same upon release.

There are two forms of release. The first relates to temporary release to attend a funeral, a christening or birth and so on and the second relates to an individual who has been incarcerated for up to ten or 20 years. There are much more serious consequences to be taken into account in the case of the latter. Will the Minister of State say if there is a type of education system in place to assist those released from prison to cope with the outside world? For example, a person currently serving a sentence of ten or 14 years will be faced with a currency change upon release. Are prisoners sent to places such as PACE in Santry for upskilling and re-integration into society? Do we resource such places sufficiently and should we look at providing them with greater access to resources to assist them in this regard?