Under the current proposals, staff will not lose their jobs, but would be transferred to other prisons. For Members from Dublin, this may seem like no big deal. For example, a prison officer transferred from Arbour Hill to Mountjoy Prison would not have to move house, let alone from one community to another. However, in County Cavan, prison officers would be moved to Castlerea, County Roscommon, or further. A move to Castlerea Prison would entail a 140 mile round trip for prison officers who have settled with their families in the area around Blacklion.

At a time when we are putting record amounts of money into communities to build sports facilities, etc. it would be crazy to even consider such a proposal. Rural communities, especially those along the Border, need to be built up. Transferring prison officers and their families from these communities would be another nail in the coffin for rural towns and villages. I have visited Loughan House on a number of occasions with my colleague Deputy Brendan Smith and local councillor Eddie Feeley. The upgrading of facilities in the past decade has greatly improved the prison. It is my hope and that of the people of west Cavan that Loughan House will remain a place of detention.

I hope the Minister will get time in the very near future to visit the prison and see the good work that goes on there. I again thank the Minister for coming to the House to take this Adjournment matter.

I welcome and appreciate all the positive contributions of Members of both Houses in recent days in recognising the positive work being done by staff at Loughan House, Shelton Abbey, Fort Mitchel and the Curragh. I share their appreciation of the considerable efforts of individual staff members of these institutions. However, at the same time I can no longer hold back the change process required to deliver a more efficient and cost effective prison service at a time when there is increased pressure on taxpayers, the economy and the public purse.

My preference is for an agreed way forward which is beneficial to both management and staff. The proposal put forward by management not only included fully operational prison service institutions at Fort Mitchel, the Curragh and Loughan House, but included a prison service-run centralised escort corps.

The annualised bonus proposal put by the Irish Prison Service to the Prison Officers Association presents an opportunity for staff to move from a culture of working as many hours as possible to a system where the emphasis would be on working less hours and working smartly for guaranteed and consistent levels of income, which by any standard in the public sector would be extremely attractive. Under the management proposal, a typical basic grade prison officer with ten years service would earn approximately €54,000 per annum and an officer in this rank with 13 years service would earn approximately €58,000 per annum, excluding the increases due under the terms of Sustaining Progress and benchmarking. These figures also exclude the sum on offer to officers of €12,250 spread over the next three years as this is a non-recurring payment.

There is still a window of opportunity for the POA to come back to the negotiating table and adopt a more realistic approach to the discussions with a view to reaching a mutually acceptable solution. However, time is fast running out and if the Prison Officers Association is unwilling to agree reasonable terms for the operation of prisons on an economically sustainable basis before 1 January I will have no option but to proceed with the decisions approved by Government. The responsibility for the choice, which must be made, rests entirely with the association.

There is a context within which the Government decision of 11 November on the future of the prison service was made. The discussions, which have taken place between the Prison Officers Association and the Irish Prison Service for more than two years and prior to that for more than five years, have been the subject of numerous questions in the Dáil and I have consistently given very comprehensive information about the progress or lack of it in those discussions.

The present impasse in the discussions with the POA has been reached despite the best efforts of the management negotiation team and the assistance of two eminent facilitators, Mr. Billy Attley and Mr. Joe McGovern. It was the intractable nature of that impasse that led me to seek Government approval for the decisive measures announced last week in order to control the escalating cost of the prison service.

The Prison Officers Association has presented a set of counter-proposals, which is very far removed from reality. It completely ignores the key issue which has been at the heart of the discussions to date, namely the elimination of overtime working. It also ignores the concept of annualised hours, which curiously both sides had already agreed was the best way forward. Essentially the POA proposal is a claim for an increase in pay in return for co-operation with selected elements of the management proposal. The POA knows, as does every other public service trade union, that an increase in pay is simply not on under the terms of Sustaining Progress and benchmarking, and cannot be negotiated by me.

The proposals in the POA submission are, by and large, taken from the management proposal and could, if taken in isolation, be introduced in line with the modernisation and efficiency commitments of Sustaining Progress. They were included in the management package in the context of an overall change programme. It could be legitimately argued that some have been bought and paid for in previous national agreements.

The decisions taken by the Government in relation to the future of the prison service have not been taken lightly. Failing agreement with the POA they will be implemented from 1 January because the Irish Prison Service cannot continue to spend public money to feed an overtime culture, which has gone virtually out of control and is sustaining outdated and inefficient work practices.

The Prison Officers Association must choose between delivering an agreement on a package of efficient work practices in all our prisons and places of detention, including Loughan House, or implementation of the measures agreed by Government, which would include the running of Loughan House by a body other than the Irish Prison Service. Prison staff have it in their power to save these institutions. However, they must make a choice and return to negotiations on the basis of the approach developed in consultation with their representatives over recent years. No one should underestimate the Government's determination that this matter must be addressed urgently because from next year the money simply will not be available. The end has come for the existing overtime culture.

A window of opportunity still exists for the POA to come back to the negotiating table. In that regard I will be meeting with the POA tomorrow afternoon to discuss a possible restart of negotiations on the basis of the official side's proposals.