Tom Parlon (Laois-Offaly, Progressive Democrats)

I commend the amendment to the motion to the House. I welcome this opportunity to address the House on behalf of the Minister, Deputy McDowell, on the issues raised by the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention, Mr. Justice Dermot Kinlen, in his annual reports which have been published by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Mr. Justice Kinlen was formally appointed to the post of Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention for a five-year term with effect from 24 April 2002, following his retirement from the High Court Bench. The third annual report of the inspector for the year 2004-05 has been submitted to the Minister. The Irish version has just been finalised and both language versions should be available in the coming days on the website of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

One of the recommendations in the third report is the privatisation of a prison on a trial basis. If it proves successful, the inspector recommends that all prisons, both public and private, should compete for contracts every five years. It would be interesting to hear the views of Senators on this recommendation. The Minister has presented a Bill to this House which would allow the outsourcing of prisoner escort services if prison officers do not agree to the proposals for organisational change which were negotiated and recommended by the executive of the Prison Officers Association. However, I am not sure if the Minister has contemplated going further and outsourcing the operation of an entire prison.

The Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention has made a considerable number of recommendations in his reports aimed at improving prison services and conditions. The inspector is not alone in being concerned about living conditions for prisoners in our older prisons and about the shortcomings in prisoner care services and programmes. These are matters which were of concern to the Minister and the prisons authority interim board even prior to the publication of the inspector's reports. The inspector has referred specifically to the need to replace Mountjoy and Portlaoise prisons in his second annual report and has similarly expressed the need to replace Cork Prison in his report on his visit to that institution.

It is not possible to implement such recommendations overnight but significant progress is being made in each case. The first priority is to replace Mountjoy Prison. Significant progress is being made in implementing this particular recommendation of the inspector as it is not acceptable that prisoners have to continue to slop out every morning. Action must be taken. It is quite clear that the existing Mountjoy Prison cannot be properly refurbished. It was estimated that to redevelop the existing site would cost over €400 million, take seven years to complete and cause very significant operational problems. That is not a viable option and it was certainly not what was recommended by the inspector. The Minister is to be commended for having the vision and courage to tackle this problem and I hope that he will get the support of this House for the action he is taking.

The new site purchased at Thornton is 150 acres in size, compared with roughly 20 acres at the Mountjoy site, giving considerable scope for developing humane state-of-the-art facilities in an uncrowded environment for the benefit of the prisoners and staff. Work should begin in the near future on the provision of new prisoner accommodation at Portlaoise Prison as the next phase of redevelopment is carried out. Planning work is being advanced to develop a new prison for the Munster region and allow the closure of Cork Prison, which was also recommended by the inspector. These are major undertakings involving replacement of almost 40% of the entire prison estate. They will take a number of years to complete but they will proceed as quickly as possible.

The inspector's recommendations are being implemented on an ongoing basis as circumstances and resources allow. This is particularly the case for the more straightforward recommendations such as the appointment of additional psychologists, improvements to prison accommodation, provision of safety and other equipment, improvements in record keeping and measures to frustrate the efforts of people who seek to make illicit drugs available to prisoners. For instance, the shortage of psychologists as identified by the inspector has been addressed by the recruitment of six additional psychologists to improve services to Mountjoy, Dóchas, St. Patrick's, Cloverhill, Midlands and Cork prisons. It is planned to hold another recruitment competition for clinical, forensic and counselling psychologists later this year.

Apart from his concerns about prison conditions, the inspector also made reference to the need for new prisons legislation. In particular, he recommended in his annual report that his office be established on a statutory basis. The question of a comprehensive new Bill covering all matters relating to prisons, including the establishment of the prisons inspectorate on a statutory basis, is included in the Department's legislative work programme. However, it will be some time before such comprehensive legislation will be completed, as it will involve the repeal and replacement of 17 Acts going back as far as 1826. Furthermore, parliamentary time is very limited ——