Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It is my understanding that the Garda is informed of attempts to smuggle drugs into prison whenever the prison staff can identify the person who has made the attempt. When drugs are thrown in over walls, sometimes that cannot be done. In those circumstances, it would be wasteful of Garda time to involve it in something which is manifestly futile.

I wish to advise the House that in the course of the recent legislation on criminal justice a new offence of smuggling, or attempting to smuggle, drugs into a prison has been created as an express new offence with special punishments attached to it. It is not as if the matter is simply let go. I am aware people have been arrested when they were found by prison officers to be in possession of drugs. My strong view is that present visiting conditions in most Irish prisons and present locations of prisons mean the Prison Service is facing an uphill battle in some institutions in keeping drugs out of prisons. That is why in certain circumstances it is necessary to have screened visits and in other cases it is necessary to move the prisons in their entirety to places where it not possible to throw things in over the wall.

When the mandatory drug testing, which is provided for in this legislation, comes into effect, there will be a firm basis for a drug free prison policy. We have spoken about that in this House previously and I am a strong believer in it. As I said on the last occasion, I cannot accept the proposition that we should take the view that because there are drugs in the world outside prison we should also expect to find them within prisons. That is to surrender completely on the function of prison, which is to rehabilitate. If we were to tolerate drugs, to have needle exchanges, to turn a blind eye to the presence of drugs in prison or to fail to have random testing of prisoners, we would make a mockery of the prison process, which is rehabilitative. Our rate of recidivism is high enough. We should use prison to initiate a programme to get every addict off drugs. If an addict has been supplied with drugs throughout his or her stay in prison, the likelihood is that he or she will leave prison not merely with a habit that needs to be fed, but also a debt. It will also mean other prisoners will have been corrupted. Innocent prisoners who have nothing to do with drugs are frequently bullied into smuggling them in for high risk prisoners. This is a very difficult situation and we cannot be naive about it. Innocent prisoners who do not have a drug habit are subjected to threats in prison to act as mules to bring drugs into the prison. Such people might be trustee prisoners outside on a prison works project in a community centre, and they come under pressure to smuggle drugs into prisons, which is a very serious matter.

I will not comment on more topical events that happened recently.