Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

Given the events of recent days where a Latvian woman was assassinated, a woman beaten within an inch of her life in the Wicklow Mountains, drug abuse and people being shot dead in apparent drugs-related feuds, I have not heard the suggestion from any Member that prisons are not necessary. Indeed, they are very necessary for certain people who are a danger to the community. The notion that crime can be directed from prison would be a very disturbing development.

No one disputes the need to have modern, effective and humane prisons. A prison like Kilmainham when it opened in 1795 was modern and progressive for the time but obviously standards have moved on a great deal. I am liberal in some respects but not in others. One of the advantages of a greenfield prison is that, hopefully, it will break the link with a type of rampant in-house prison drugs culture. Presumably that is one of the objectives the Minister is trying to achieve.

An issue at which we will need to look at some time in the future and progress — perhaps this is on the liberal side — is the question of conjugal visits which exist in some parts of the world and whether that would have a good effect on prisoner behaviour. The Minister is correct to keep the outsourcing facility. That dispute is over and has been resolved. However, having got that far down the road, there is no harm putting a safety net in place.

The question of video links for what one might call formal and brief court procedures has a capability of saving public money. There are adequate protections in terms of prisoners being able to appeal. Quite an elaborate system is set out in the Bill in regard to sanctions for misbehaviour.

The other reason I rose to speak is to refer to a small section of the prison population which one would have hoped might not be there given the developments in the peace process, that is the paramilitary prisoners. Apart from a few dissident paramilitaries in Castlereagh Prison, they are mainly in Portlaoise Prison. One must distinguish between different organisations and different types of dissidents. One cannot have a problem with dissidents in the sense of disagreements in political debate in a democratic society. The INLA, whatever about any extra-curricular activities, at least agreed a ceasefire in the broad political sense in 1998, and in the political sense of that term has, broadly speaking, observed it. Unfortunately that is not the case for the Real IRA, which declared a ceasefire after the catastrophe of the Omagh bombing but, foolishly from many points of view, broke it approximately a year later. There is also the Continuity IRA, which likes to present itself as the sea-green incorruptibles of republicanism. It is a curious sort of republicanism which does not recognise the existence of this republic, which is one of the principal achievements of republicanism in the 20th century.

This is mainly a security issue and after 1998 fortunately most, but not all, activities have been foiled. The political purpose of the bombing in the centre of the mainly nationalist city of Newry was difficult to fathom. In one of last week's Sunday papers somebody close to them suggested that if they shot a police officer the security authorities in both jurisdictions would come down on them like a ton of bricks. It is unsatisfactory that this continues. There is, as there was in the main peace process, a political, ideological dimension to it. Although most of the people involved regard themselves as left-wing progressive, if one believes the ideology the "government of the republic" is an anonymous military dictatorship which, unlike any democratic government feels it has the right to apply corporal and capital punishment in complete ignorance of human rights. Last weekend, despite the overwhelming will of the Irish people North and South, a conference asserted some historic right as if the people alive today had no right to decide how the legitimate ideal of a united Ireland might be pursued and achieved.

The relevance of this to prison legislation is that the Prison Service is one of the few points of contact between the Government and such organisations. As has been shown in more mainstream organisations, prisoners can influence those outside. This and the corresponding problem of loyalist paramilitarism constitute an incomplete part of the peace process, regardless of what happens with the St. Andrew's Agreement. While inevitably it must be conducted by security means, the political and ideological dimension is not to be neglected.