Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Prisoners who are not in close confinement are given access to telephones, which are monitored, to make domestic telephone calls on an agreed basis within prison. It is not a matter of people being unnecessarily held incommunicado in prison. I do not want to elaborate more at this stage other than to say I have every reason to believe that serious criminals have used mobile telephones clandestinely to operate and direct criminal activities outside prisons. That is a fact, which is deeply regrettable.

Senator Tuffy asked how this provision will be enforced. The first step is to ensure telephones are not brought into prisons and the second step is to have detection and suppression equipment within prisons, which is currently being rolled out across the prison service. Probably the best means of stopping the abuse of these telephones is to make them useless inside prison areas, which is what we are attempting to do.

However, the ingenuity of people knows no bounds. Therefore, it is a purpose of this section to ban people from bringing into prison any kind of telecommunications device and to make it illegal for a prisoner to have any such device in a prison. As long as there is one charged mobile telephone in a prison, prisoners can use their individual SIM cards which are compatible with that telephone. Once that is the case, as everybody is aware, such cards can be easily concealed in virtually any place on the body, in a cell or anywhere else in a prison. The key step is to get the handsets and to have in place a counter technology to prevent the use of these telephones within prisons by people who are directing crime.

Senator Tuffy raised the question of rehabilitation and education in prisons. It is my strong view that the rehabilitative side of Irish prisons must be dramatically developed and I intend to do that. The first step I had to take was to stabilise the economic situation in our prisons, as the prison budget was being cannibalised by overtime expenses. We have done that now and have brought to bear rationality. The second step is to bring the physical facilities in prisons up to a decent standard. Far more sophisticated education, training, skills and courses can be provided if there is security within a prison. However, if prisons are old, antiquated and crime-ridden, that is another matter.

I wish to record my concern for the safety of prisoners. One of the issues about which I am most concerned is that many prisoners are brutalised, bullied, stabbed or threatened with the carrying out of such actions on a fairly routine basis. I was in Savannah in Georgia for St. Patrick's Day and while there I visited a local county prison in Chatam County. I noticed that all prisoners there are frequently required to go through scanners to facilitate the detection of metal objects and the like. This is considered to be part of a safety regime in prisons there. The use of such scanners should also be part of our safety regime. That prisoners can have knives, iron bars and other weapons imperils other prisoners and increases the likelihood of violence in a prison context.

On the proportionality issue, one of the problems is that, for example, if a person is convicted of a serious gangland crime and if that person is able to direct violence on other people outside prison or able to make arrangements via a mobile telephone to corrupt or threaten people within the prison or to demand that contraband goods be sent into the prison, all such activities tend to compromise the security and authority of the prison regime. It would be a serious matter if a member of staff was compromised and participated in breaking the rules in these circumstances. The system relies on the majority of the prison officers being decent, law abiding and loyal members of staff who would not dream of breaking the rules. However, if there is a small minority who are breaking the rules, they must be rooted out very effectively.

Prison inspectors in the United Kingdom gave a high percentage for the number of prison officers whom they believe are regularly involved in compromising the security of prisons by conspiring with prisoners to smuggle in items and the like. I hope, and would like to believe, the number here is a much smaller fraction of that percentage. One matter is certain, we must have a regime in prisons in which prison officers, who are well paid and trusted, have every incentive to believe that upholding the high standards that are expected of them is the right course to take and that any of their colleagues who break those rules take the consequences for doing so.