Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Just like myself. Those of us who have been to visit it will appreciate that it is and always will be wholly unsuitable for the rehabilitation of prisoners. At least Thornton Hall would have had the advantage of having space to play football, have running tracks and so on that could give offenders a decent life. Such facilities would also help to physically rehabilitate them. The site also had the capacity to allow us to move towards having a drug free prison, something Mountjoy Prison simply cannot do. Those who condemned the Thornton Hall project should remember that at the time the Government sold 30 acres of land at Shanganagh Castle. It sold part of it for private development and part of it to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for public housing. I note in the papers that although this happened in my time as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform some 14 years ago, no housing has ever been built on the land purchased on that occasion. The entire proceeds of the sale were invested in acquiring 150 acres of land in north county Dublin in an isolated place where there would not have been major communal resistance and where it would have been possible to provide decent psychiatric facilities in conjunction with the Irish Prison Service. It was a visionary project for the improvement of prisons. A previous Minister, former Deputy Alan Shatter, commissioned a report that did not state the project should be abandoned. I believe that some day on that land a proper, decent prison should be built. Whether the numbers have to be larger or smaller is not the issue; it is about having the capacity to rehabilitate prisoners, people who are sentenced having some hope in their lives instilled through the education system and sports and recreational facilities and the physical rebuilding of the lives of drug addicts in a drugs free prison. These are hopes to which I aspire to having and they are hopes that will never be realised as long as Mountjoy Prison is the main prison in the Dublin region.

There is no point in being romantic about Mountjoy Prison, Brendan Behan, Kevin Barry and all the rest. It is not and never will be a suitable institution for the rehabilitation of offenders. It is a depressing and awful place. Anybody who thinks it has a long-term future in a decent prison system is very much mistaken.