Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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630. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the amount it has cost to provide taxis to transfer prisoners from County Donegal to the various prisons across the State in the years 2012, 2013 and 2014; and the budget from which these costs have been sourced. [19693/14]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that the total cost for the transportation of prisoners by taxi in the years concerned were €251,341.00 in 2012, €163,877.00 in 2013 and €57,813.00 to date in 2014. The Irish Prison Service has used taxis for many years as a means of transporting certain prisoners on escort, mainly to court, but occasionally to hospital. The policy is for such escorts to be carried out wherever possible by the Prison Service Escorts Corp, who were established in late 2005 for this purpose, using Prison Service vehicles. However, in certain limited circumstances, decisions are made to employ a taxi service for particular prisoner escorts, in view of the specific logistical, economical and operational factors that exist. The IPS carried out research on this matter with a view to replacing taxis with official vehicles, however, in the vast majority of cases, hiring the taxi made economic sense. Since the establishment of the Prison Service Escort Corp the use of taxi has reduced substantially.

I wish further to advise the Deputy that records in relation to individual taxi journeys are not kept on a prisoner by prisoner basis. To establish the county of origin of each of the prisoners concerned would necessitate a manual examination of several thousand invoices, followed by a cross-referencing of each individual invoice against the Gate Records of each prison in order to identify the prisoners and finally a check of each prisoner's personal details to establish which of them are from, or resident in, County Donegal. The Deputy will, I am sure, appreciate that the resources involved in such an exercise would be inordinate and cause major disruption to the work of the Directorate concerned, which would not be justifiable in the current environment. Finally, I wish to advise the Deputy that the costs incurred are charged to Vote 21 - The Irish Prison Service.