Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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1117. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of prisoners released on temporary release within 24 hours of them being sent to prison in each of the past ten years and to date in 2024. [11289/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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The Irish Prison Service must accept into custody all people committed to prison by the Courts. As such, the Irish Prison Service has no control over the numbers committed to custody at any given time.

Where the number of people in custody exceeds the maximum capacity in any prison, officials in the Irish Prison Service make every effort to deal with this through a combination of inter-prison transfers and structured Temporary Release. The legislative basis for temporary release is set out in the Criminal Justice Act 1960, as amended by the Criminal Justice (Temporary Release of Prisoners) Act 2003. Decisions in relation to temporary release are considered on a case by case basis and the safety of the public is paramount when those decisions are made.

The table below includes the number of committals to prison released on Temporary Release within 24 hours of their arrival to prison, having received a prison sentence. It is the case that some individuals committed to prison may have been committed on more than one occasion.

When considering the table below, it should be noted that individuals committed to prison for non-payment of fines accounted for a high volume of committals until the introduction of the Fines (Payment and Recovery) Act 2014, which was commenced in January 2016 and resulted in a correlating decrease in the number of committals from 2016 onwards.

The Act represented major reform of the fine payment and recovery system in the State and implemented a Government commitment to provide for attachment of earnings orders for the collection of fines. The new system seeks to ensure that fines imposed are collected and also to reduce to a minimum the number of people committed to prison for non-payment of fines.

The number of prisoners released on temporary release within 24 hours of them being sent to prison in each of the past ten years up to 2024 is outlined in the table below.