I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. The purpose of the Bill is to provide for the temporary detention of prisoners in lock-ups provided in Garda stations or in any other places, being places designated for the purpose by the Minister for Justice.
There are, at the present time, five prisons open for the reception of prisoners, namely, those at Dublin, Portlaoise, Limerick, Cork and Sligo. For the past ten years the prison population has been falling steadily. In 1946 the daily average number in custody was 683, whereas last year it was only 396. There is accommodation in the five prisons for some 1,520 prisoners and there is, therefore, much more accommodation than is needed.
Accordingly, it is proposed to close the prisons at Cork and Sligo in which the daily average number of prisoners in custody last year was no more than 15 and eight respectively. Nor was this a freak year, as the daily averages have been low in these two prisons for several years. Cork prison will be closed on the 1st April and Sligo prison a little later. There will then be left in the other prisons sufficient accommodation for more than 1,200 prisoners, which is about three times the existing requirements.
On the closing of the two prisons, the prisoners serving sentences in Cork and Sligo will be transferred to Limerick and to Mountjoy, and no problem arises in connection with them. However, provision has now to be made for the detention of unconvicted and unsentenced prisoners while their cases are being tried in courts situated in areas that have hitherto been served by the prisons at Cork and Sligo, and also for the detention of convicted and sentenced prisoners pending removal to prison, since it will be no longer feasible in some cases, because of the distance to be travelled, to convey all such prisoners to a prison without spending a night somewhere en route.
Up to the present, Cork and Sligo prisons have been available for the detention of prisoners awaiting trial and of remand prisoners but, with the closing of these two prisons, this will cease to be the case. Unconvicted and unsentenced prisoners can be temporarily detained in Garda Síochána stations under the law as it stands, but a convicted prisoner must be taken straight to prison. When Sligo prison is closed, such a requirement would be highly inconvenient, say, in a case being tried in Donegal which was not disposed of until a late hour in the evening, since the nearest prison will then be situated in Dublin. For this reason there is included in the Bill a provision to authorise the detention of prisoners in lock-ups pending their removal to prison for a period up to 48 hours. It is necessary to authorise detention not merely in Garda stations but in such lock-ups elsewhere as may be designated by the Minister for Justice because the requisite accommodation may not always be available in a Garda station. It is, in fact, the intention to establish in Sligo a lockup, separate from the Garda station, by suitable conversion of two of the existing prison cottages.
I am sure the House will be satisfied as to the necessity for the Bill and I would ask it to give it favourable consideration.