Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Question 534: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of prisoners released by Ministerial order in each of the past five years; the nature of the offences for which they were originally sentenced; the percentage of their sentence that had been served; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32221/07]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I presume that the Deputy is referring to instances of temporary release pursuant to section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1960 as amended by the Criminal Justice (Temporary Release of Prisoners) Act 2003. Periods of temporary release may be granted during a prisoner's sentence for health or other humanitarian grounds (e.g. a funeral), to assist the Gardaí, to assess a person's ability to reintegrate into society or to prepare a prisoner for release. The overriding issue in considering any application for temporary release of a prisoner is the safety of the public. In addition, all releases are subject to conditions. Any offender who breaches his or her conditions may be arrested and returned to prison immediately by the Gardaí.

A prisoner may receive multiple instances of temporary release while serving his or her sentence and most prisoners will receive a short period of temporary release at the end of their sentence to facilitate their reintegration into society. The compilation of statistics in the form requested by the Deputy would require a disproportionate and inordinate amount of staff time and expense to prepare and could not be justified in the current circumstances where there are other significant demands on resources.

Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Question 535: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of prisoners who availed of automatic remission in each of the past five years; the percentage of their original sentence that was served by the time they were released; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32222/07]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The granting of sentence remission is a feature of many prison systems worldwide and has been a feature of the Irish criminal justice system since the foundation of the State. Prisoners sentenced to imprisonment (other than the categories listed below) are entitled by law to remission of one quarter of sentence provided they are of good behaviour during their time in custody.

There are a number of categories of prisoner who are excluded from standard remission of sentence under the Prison Rules and these are as follows:

Life sentence prisoners

Persons convicted of debtor offences

Persons convicted of contempt of court

Persons being held on remand warrants

Persons serving a sentence of less than one month