Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)

I rise to bring up a point about the urgent concerns facing women in Irish prisons. As of May, our national prison capacity stood at 131%, but it is women's prisons that are suffering the most. The female prison in Limerick is at 152% of capacity, while the Dóchas Centre in Mountjoy is at 127%. These are not just statistics; they are women sleeping on floors, traumatised by overcrowding. Many of them I face in our homeless cafés when they are released, and they are released into homelessness and a housing crisis. It breaches the dignity of what we have signed up to under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Bangkok rules. From my visits to the Dóchas Centre, I can see that most women in custody are non-violent. They are mothers, carers and survivors of abuse, yet we keep cycling them through a system that punishes trauma and poverty instead of addressing it. Education, mental health supports and rehabilitation within the Prison Service are exactly what is needed. Prison services are overwhelmed, and that can be seen from the statistics. Staff are burnt out, and the costs, both human and financial, are mounting.

I call on the Government to commit to immediate reform of the prison system, starting with gender-responsive, community-based alternatives to prison, proper post-release support and policymaking that is shaped by lived experience. Let us end a system that breaks people down. What I have learnt, even with the Tiglin programmes, is that such reform creates a system that builds people up.