Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill. I also welcome the Minister and endorse what she is doing in this regard. Senator Quinn mentioned one of our greatest public servants ever, T. K. Whitaker, who chaired the report on the closure of St. Patrick's Institution 30 years ago. This report is now only being acted on, but Mr. Whitaker should be recognised for it. As someone who had the pleasure of meeting him on two or three occasions when I was involved with the constitutional committee chaired by the late Brian Lenihan, I note with joy that he is 99 tomorrow. It was an honour and privilege to meet him. We should express our gratitude for the wonderful work he has done, not alone in this regard, but in many other areas over his long decades of public service.

I endorse the point that a prison is a place of last resort and would like to raise the issue of where people are sentenced to prison for minor offences, such as not paying TV licence fees, and are committed to prison for being seven, 14 or 21 days in default. Let me outline a problem that arose for a small farmer in a part of Munster.About three years ago he decided to travel up to the midlands to get a part for his tractor. He came into a strange town and looked to put a coin in the box for a parking permit, but there was a sign up saying the machine was out of order. He went and got his part and had a cup of tea and a sandwich after his long journey from the south of Ireland. Unfortunately a ticket was placed on his car and, feeling aggrieved, he rang the people concerned. He talked and appealed but to no avail. His mistake was that he did not turn up at the District Court a year later for the hearing. That poor individual was arrested and dragged from a remote part of southern Ireland, with the assistance of the Garda, all the way up to Mountjoy because of a parking fine. He was let out the same day. I rang the prison governor who was embarrassed that this should happen. We must get away from this system of penalising people by sending them to prison for one, seven or 14 days.

I welcome the closure of St. Patrick's Institution. No person under 18 should be in prison, unless there is a very serious reason. There is community service as well as other methods which were mentioned by Senator Cummins.

People who are not paying fines should have the money taken from their pensions, social welfare or some other source. We recently had the case - I think it was last year - of an elderly lady in some part of Dublin who had a television dish up on the side of her house. The local authority acted on a complaint about the dish and she was apparently committed to prison. This is the sort of thing we must avoid.

If we are serious about reform, we must have a root and branch overhaul. People who have not committed a crime, in the real sense of having attacked, viciously assaulted or stabbed someone, should not be going to prison. There are instances where, for their own safety and the safety of others, people have to be in prison. As well as the young people who will hopefully be saved from St. Pat's - it is a place I visited once in my capacity as a solicitor - I hope that we can get rid of imprisonment for petty offences. It has been going on for over 100 years that someone in default of a fine, say of €50, gets seven or 14 days. We must move away from that. Sending people to prison for non-payment of fines or of small payments due to credit unions or whatever is sending out the wrong signal. We are mixing the chaff with the wheat and that was never intended by the criminal justice system.