Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)
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96. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if she will provide in tabular form the number and percentage of prisoners by nationality in each prison; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36005/14]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I can advise the Deputy that on the 31 August 2014 there were 3,792 prisoners in custody across the prison system. Of this 3,286 or almost 87% were Irish. The second largest nationality group was Polish which accounted for 81 or 2.14% of the number in custody.

A full breakdown of the nationalities, taken from the most recent snapshot of the prison population conducted on 31st August 2014, is set out in the following table.

Of the 13,055 persons committed to custody in 2013, 10,719 were Irish Nationals (82.1%), which was a decrease of 616 or 5.4% on the corresponding figure for 2012 of 11,335. Other EU nationals (excluding Irish) accounted for 1,577 (12.1%) of persons committed. Other European nationals accounted for 131 (1%), African nationals for 293 (2.2%), Asian nationals for 224 91.7%) and Central/South American nationals for 61 (0.5%).