Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Question 912: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of prisoners released from prisons in the past five years who did not benefit from remission or early release and therefore had fulfilled their full sentence which was originally handed down by a court of justice; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34180/07]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Prior to the coming into operation of the Prison Rules, 2007, the legal basis for remission of sentence was Rule 38(1) of the Rules for the Government of Prisons that had been part of Irish law since 1947. The courts were aware, when passing sentence in any case, of this statutory entitlement to remission of sentence. The granting of sentence remission is a feature of prison systems worldwide. Under the 1947 Rules, sentenced prisoners were entitled, by law, to remission of one quarter of sentence provided they were of good behaviour during their time in custody. Where a prisoner does suffer loss of remission for a disciplinary offence, the amount of remission taken away would not normally be the full amount of remission that the prisoner would potentially earn.

There were a number of categories of prisoner who were excluded from remission of sentence under the 1947 Rules and these were 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

Prison records are not maintained in such a way as to allow the detailed information sought by the Deputy to be readily compiled. I can inform the Deputy that approximately 40% to 50% of the persons committed to prison each year would be in a category not eligible to earn remission. These would be mainly remand prisoners. It is worth noting that the numbers in prison custody for debtor offences or for contempt of court at any given time amount to less than 1% of the total prison population.

Almost every sentenced prisoner eligible to earn remission would receive remission. It is also important to note that a life sentence is indeterminate and there is no guaranteed release date. All prisoners who are serving life sentences are eligible to have their cases reviewed by the Parole Board when they have served seven years in custody. The Board, which was established in 2001, makes recommendations to myself in relation to the management of offenders serving long sentences. While it is open to the Parole Board to make any recommendation, the experience of recent years with both the Parole Board and the Sentence Review Group (the predecessor to the Parole Board) is that life sentenced prisoners are normally reviewed on a number of occasions over a number of years before any substantial concessions are recommended.