Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The Senator has availed of the opportunity to push a door which the Minister left somewhat ajar during the debate on Committee Stage. There was a suggestion, in what the Minister said, that a judge making a recommendation that someone in need of psychiatric inpatient treatment in the Prison Service should have regard to that. The Minister, having reflected on the matter, is not swayed in his thinking since Committee Stage. While it is accepted that it is open to judges to make recommendations when passing sentence, when one considers such circumstances it is hard to see how any judge could make such a recommendation at such a late stage in a trial without appropriate medical advice to support it. As the Minister said on Committee Stage, it is better for the Prison Service to make decisions of that kind rather than the Judiciary. There would also be a concern that there could be some suggestion that designated centres could be substituted for jails and that they could be characterised as something which they are clearly not, that is, places of detention for persons found guilty as a punishment.