Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It depends. For example, a prisoner suffering from schizophrenia could be moved from a prison to a psychiatric hospital and it may not be appropriate or practical to have him or her accompanied by an officer with psychiatric training. We cannot have a situation in which someone cannot be moved and must be left untreated because a person with psychiatric training is unavailable at the time. We must be reasonable in these matters.

The custody and welfare of prisoners, many of whom are psychiatrically unwell — there is a high degree of psychiatric illness among prisoners — involve their being moved from A to B, but I cannot be put in the position of saying that one officer is suitable while another is not. The training must be general. I cannot operate on the basis that every prisoner who is psychiatrically unwell should be dealt with by a psychiatrically trained prison officer in routine transactions within the Prison Service.

Moving prisoners from A to B is one issue, but what about moving them within the Prison Service, such as from block to block, to their meals, to training, education or fitness classes or so on? If I go down the road of specifying that a different category of prison officer must be present if a prisoner is being moved from A to B, I would be creating an obstacle to the effective custody of those prisoners without much benefit.