Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 6 Dec 1991

Vol. 414 No. 3

Supplementary Estimates, 1991. - Vote 21 — Prisons.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Burke)

I move:

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £2,234,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1991, for expenses in connection with prisons, including centres of detention for juveniles; for probation and welfare services; and for payment of a grant-in aid.

The need for this Supplementary Estimate arises essentially to cover additional expenditure incurred in connection with disturbances in Limerick and Mountjoy Prisons in September this year.

I should like first to give a brief account of what happened. On 10 September eight prisoners climbed onto the roof of Limerick Prison. They were not destructive and all came down peacefully within three days. On 15 September six prisoners climbed onto the roof of Mountjoy Prison. It was decided not to force them from the roof immediately and, in fact, one came down voluntarily before the following morning.

On the afternoon of 16 September, however, a further 66 prisoners managed to climb onto the roof from an exercise yard. The prisoners in the yard had formed a human pyramid by which some of them were able to climb to the top of a retaining wall and from there to the roof.

The prisoners then proceeded to strip the roof and to use the slates as missiles to keep prison staff at bay. Eventually prison staff, backed up by gardaí and an Army fire tender, brought the disturbance under control. Additional staffing was required immediately to deal with these disturbances and also to cope with their aftermath and the general unsettling effect they had throughout the prison system.

Short-term higher staffing levels of this kind are possible only by the recall of prison officers from rest days for overtime duty. The increase shown under the salaries, wages and allowances subhead of the Vote arises from this additional overtime. The higher staffing levels have been gradually reduced since the disturbances and the position should be back to normal very shortly.

The total overtime bill for the prison service in 1991 will be about £14 million. This represents a reduction in real terms since 1986 when the bill was £13.4 million and since then the prisoner population has grown from about 1,870 to about 2,190. A new institution at Wheatfield has been opened which involved an increase in manning and new rosters have been introduced which eliminate dependence on in-built overtime for the staffing of part of the prison day. However, making due allowance for the particular problem which had to be dealt with over the past few months, the continuing underlying high level of overtime is a source of concern.

While a certain level of overtime is unavoidable given the special conditions in which prisons have to operate, strict control must be exercised over overtime working so that overtime may be kept to the absolute minimum. The steps that are being taken to keep the level of overtime in check are currently being reviewed to see what further improvements can be effected.

Absenteeism, which accounts for a disproportionate slice of overtime working, is far too high, even allowing for the special features of work in prisons, and measures to reduce it will, therefore, continue to receive particular attention.

In the original estimate for this year I provided for the recruitment of 196 additional prison officers in order to deal with the growth in the numbers in custody and to effect a reduction in the level of overtime. So far 169 of these staff have been recruited on a phased basis and I expect that their availability will enable the Prison Service to respond to the demands which will fall on it in the coming years while reducing recourse to overtime.

It would be wrong to suggest, however, that all the overtime, or anything approaching it, could be converted into more jobs. Most of the overtime arises to deal with unforeseen requirements. The recent disturbances in Limerick and Mountjoy prisons and their aftermath are a case in point. Another requirement is for escorting prisoners outside the prisons for routine hospital treatment, for transfers within the system and for court hearings. Since requirements vary from day to day the employment of extra staff to meet those requirements would not necessarily be more economical. Other unforeseen requirements — for example, for staff to replace those absent, to supervise contractors working within the prisons and to deal with particular problem areas — also give rise to overtime.

Measures to reduce the level of overtime must be targeted on specific areas where tangible improvements can be achieved without losing the benefit of a level of reasonable flexibility in manning arrangements which overtime gives and which is so necessary to the particular security and other requirements of the operation of prisons.

A considerable amount of damage was caused to the roof of Mountjoy Prison during the disturbance. The cost of immediate repairs was in the region of £500,000. In conjunction with the repairs some security deficiencies had to be remedied and moreover, deficiencies identified in other prisons in the light of the Limerick and Mountjoy experience had also to be made good as a matter of urgency, particularly in view of the unsettling effect throughout the prison system of what happened in Limerick and Mountjoy. It was this expenditure which gave rise to the overrun on subhead D of the Vote — buildings and equipment. Incidentally the Mountjoy disturbance demonstrated the serious security weakness of a modern slated roof. Not only could the prisoners break through it easily, and move freely on it, but the slates themselves when used as missiles were a potent weapon against prison staff, gardaí and Army. It was decided, therefore, to replace the entire roof with metal-deck sheeting. The cost of the new style roof was about 20 per cent higher than direct replacement.

On a general point I cannot accept that the prisoners involved in these disturbances could in any way be justified in what they did. There is no good basis, for examples, for suggesting that it was a legitimate protest against prison conditions. Conditions in Mountjoy and Limerick prisons are not unreasonable given the age of the buildings and the general pressure on prison space. Whatever defects the buildings have will be remedied in time as a planned renovation programme is completed. Since 1987 about £31 million has been spent on the prison building programme, apart from the ultra-modern facility at Wheatfield.

The major portion of this expenditure has been directed towards the general improvement of physical conditions in the prisons. Specific projects undertaken include major electrical works, including the provision of a cellcall system at Mountjoy and Portlaoise; new laundry and workshop facilities and the refurbishment of the kitchen at Cork Prison; and the renovation of the D Wing of St. Patrick's Institution. A particularly noteworthy example of what has been and is being achieved is the renovated D Wing of St. Patrick's Institution which I officially inaugurated recently. Not only have the structures, fittings and fixtures been modernised but a range of new facilities have been installed, including in-cell sanitation.

At present the constructon of a new unit in Mountjoy Prison to cater for offenders with communicable diseases is well underway. The unit, which will provide an additional 57 prison places, is due for completion in June next. Work on the total refurbishment of Mountjoy Women's Prison commenced recently and is due for completion in September 1992. This work, which includes in-cell sanitation, will bring the Women's Prison up to the same high standard as the newly refurbished D Wing of St. Patrick's Institution.

The developments are a clear indication of the Government's commitment to modernising the prison system. I have to say that the money spent on the repairs to Mountjoy as a result of the disturbance would have been better spent on these kinds of improvement — and let us not forget that what we are dealing with here is taxpayers' money. At no stage of the disturbance did the prisoners put forward any complaints of real substance and it is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that the disturbance simply represented a challenge to good order in the prisons and to the institutions of State. Causing large scale destruction in Mountjoy Prison and serious risks to the life and limb of prison staff, gardaí and members of the Army can scarcely be regarded as a manifestation of genuine concern for the improvement of prison conditions.

This Supplementary Estimate also covers minor overruns on expenditure on posts and telecommunications services in the prisons and on the Probation and Welfare Service. There is no special significance to them and they represent a very small percentage of the budget for those services.

There are total savings of £924,000 elsewhere in the Vote to offset the increases to which I have referred.

As Deputies will be aware, the prison system operates side by side with a range of alternatives to custody which are available either at the stage when sentence is being passed in court or when conditional release from prison is being granted. Alternatives include fines and compensation orders, probation, deferred and suspended sentences and community service orders. At present, there at about 3,200 offenders under supervision in the community as an alternative to custody, of whom 750 are on community service orders. The desirability of using prisons only as a last resort, the pressure on prison space and cost considerations make it essential to develop as many alternatives as possible.

One of these is the scheme for intensive supervision of more serious offenders in the community by the Probation and Welfare Service, which I announced last year. The scheme will be applicable both at the stage when offenders are convicted and sentenced in court and on the release of offenders from the prisons. It is aimed at dealing with about 200 serious offenders at any one time in the community rather than in prison. Considerable progress has been made in putting the scheme in place. By the end of this year 18 probation and welfare officers out of a total of 31 will have been recruited to operate the scheme and significant steps will have been taken in developing three new centres, in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, to facilitate the scheme. The provision which was made in the 1991 Estimate for this project has turned out to be more than necessary for immediate requirements for this year and for that reason it is possible to show a saving under subheads G1 and G3 to offset excess expenditure elsewhere on the Vote. Savings will also be achieved in expenditure on manufacturing in the prisons and appropriations-in-aid will be higher than anticipated.

Before I conclude, I should like to make a few general points about the prison system. At any one time there are 2,200 persons in custody. During the course of a year about 7,000 persons pass through the system. Of these about 3,000 are persons who have been remanded in custody by the courts pending trial. The length of time for which these persons remain in custody depends on bail arrangements or the time taken for the case to come to a hearing, but very often it can be as short as a few days. Where convicted persons are concerned the length of time spent in custody depends on the length of sentence, but most sentences are relatively short. Therefore, 2,200 places are generally adequate to meet requirements. A quite mistaken picture would be given if one were to simply divide the total number of persons who pass through the prison system in a year by the number of places and draw conclusions from that about the proportion of their sentence that is being served by sentenced persons.

Temporary release from prisons before completion of sentence is, of course, available under the Criminal Justice Act, 1960, for selected prisoners, depending on the nature of the offence, the length of sentence and taking account of the overriding concern to protect the public. All such releases are conditional on good behaviour and supervision, as necessary. The important point to emphasise is that all offenders who are committed to custody by the courts will be accommodated in the prisons and that no person will be released from custody before the normal expiration of sentence if that would be contrary to the public interest.

The distribution of the prisoner population between different prisons and places of detention and the operational arrangements in place in them is subject to continuous review. The position in Limerick Prison, in particular, has been assessed over recent months and as a consequence the Government have decided to discontinue military protection of the perimeter of the prison. The military presence there commenced in the mid-seventies to deal with the situation obtaining at that time when the prison contained a large number of subversive offenders. The situation has changed over the years and Limerick now holds just one female offender in that category. A military presence is not now considered essential and the Government have, therefore, decided to relieve the Army of the obligation to man the perimeter of the prison. I am satisfied that arrangements can be put in place, using the resources of the prison service backed up by gardaí as required, to maintain an appropriate level of security at the prison. If necessary, a redistribution of high risk prisoners to other prisons will take place should that be required to ensure their safe custody.

Although it is not directly relevant to this Supplementary Estimate I should like to inform the House of a development which is planned for next year. It has to do with the solving of serious deficiencies in the prison system, namely, the easing of overcrowding and the provision of a facility for disruptive prisoners who should be separated from the general body of prisoners. I should explain that experience shows that the vast majority of prisoners simply want to serve out their sentences in peace. In a prison setting, however, it is very easy for troublemakers to play on the ordinary frustrations inherent in prison custody and to provoke discontent. When this builds up the results can be serious disturbances and riots of the kind which occurred recently in Limerick and Mountjoy Prisons.

The way to prevent that happening is to remove from the troublemakers the opportunity to foment disorder. For this reason I have obtained the approval of the Government to take over the military detention barracks in the Curragh for use as a separation prison for troublemakers. The intention is to staff and operate it exclusively by prison staff without any input from the Army. The prison will have accomodation for 47 prisoners and should be ready for occupation some time next year when necessary alterations have been carried out. The availability of this prison as an additional element in the whole prison system will go a long way to ensuring stability in the system and the better use of resources for the benefit of the majority of those in custody. No expenditure will arise on the proposal this year and I will deal in more detail with the proposal when the budgetary provision for 1992 is being debated.

I recommend to the House the adoption of this Supplementary Estimate.

Dr. Lee

At the outset I should say that the solution offered by the Minister towards the end of his speech is too little, too late. On the evening of the All-Ireland Football Final on Sunday, 15 September, 1991, the citizens of this city first heard over the radio and later on television about a developing riot in Mountjoy Jail. What began as a small protest by five prisoners on overcrowding, bad conditions and poor quality food burst into fullscale riot on Monday afternoon. A few weeks prior to that there was a roof protest in Limerick Jail. Warnings about trouble arising from overcrowding, poor accommodation and unhygienic conditions occurred almost simultaneously in the reports of the State appointed visiting committees to Mountjoy Prison.

The riot at Strangeways Prison in Manchester last year should have focused the attention of the Minister and his Department on the almost certain probability of similar outbursts of violence in our jails. Over the past 18 years there have been four riots in our prisons, three of which were Mountjoy. These riots give us an indication that far from ideal conditions in grossly overcrowded jails are breeding grounds for serious trouble. The Prison Officers' Association hammered home this point in the aftermath of the Strangeways riot. They declared that if one single message had emerged from recent events, it must surely have brought home to the public that prisons are clearly operated on the goodwill of prisoners and that any time that good will is withdrawn serious sustained conflict will result.

Since 1983, when the Government of the day signed a Statutory Instrument amending the 1947 Rules for the Government of Prisons, there has been repeated condemnation of overcrowding and conditions in prisons. The 1947 Rules states:

A cell shall not be used for the separate confinement of a prisoner unless it is certified by the Minister to be of such a size, and to be lighted, warmed, ventilated, and fitted up in such a manner as may be requisite for health, and furnished with the means of enabling the prisoner to communicate at any time with an officer of the prison.

This situation was amended in May 1983 to allow for two or more prisoners to be held in a cell. Mountjoy was designed to hold 430 prisoners; at the time of the riot it held approximately 650. Various visiting committees to Mountjoy in 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1988 stated that it was of paramount importance that rights of offenders be observed and upheld, that in no circumstances should they be placed in conditions which could cause psychological and physical deteriotation. They have described toilet facilities as disgraceful and degrading. Regularly all cells were full for the night and prisoners had to sleep on the floor in workshops etc., with a long night lock-up and Victorian toilet conditions. Surely this was a recipe for disaster. In addition, there was no suitable accommodation for prisoners who became violent during the night. In 1988 the committee stated that overcrowding had reached unacceptable levels and many of the prisoners were spending 24 hours in their cells. In addition, prisoners were at times held in corrugated steel cabins with no ventilation awaiting vacant cells. Can you imagine on a hot summer day — we have had many of those in the last few summers — the stench, the rage, the frustration and the anger which the Minister and his Department were breeding? The Minister's response was to fire the visiting committee, a classical example of the king shooting the messengers.

Mr. Burke

I was not Minister for Justice in 1988.

Dr. Lee

Yes, you were.

Mr. Burke

I became Minister for Justice in July 1989. Get it right.

Dr. Lee

That was the hallmark of middle management and the Minister must accept responsibility for it. I did not interrupt the Minister——

Mr. Burke

I defend my predecessor as well. Get it right.

Dr. Lee

I do not understand how the Minister can sit there and blame this entirely on the system. The Minister and nobody else is responsible, the buck stops at his desk. I turn now to the riot itself. Page two of The Star on 17 September 1991 says it all. On page one the headline “Surrender” is in big, bold print.

An Ceann Comhairle

Displays of that kind are not usual in this House and my predecessors have, in fact, deprecated it on many occasions. It is sufficient to make one's speech without a display of that kind.

Dr. Lee

Page two of The Star of 17 September 1991 says it all. On page one under the heading of “Surrender” in bold print there is a photograph of 15 prisoners on the rooftop in balaclavas shouting insults at the prison officers and the gardaí. Page two shows a photograph of 15 gardaí with a pressure hose on a rooftop, 40 feet up in the air — all of whom were in mortal danger because the Minister refused to heed the warning signs. I pay tribute to the many brave gardaí and prison officers who risked their life and limb on that infamous night. They showed courage above and beyond the call of duty and in the best traditions of the gardaí and prison services. The prison officers and gardaí met with a hail of slates and abuse and it was a miracle that none of the gardaí, the prison officers or the inmates of the prisons was killed.

In addition, it was necessary for the security forces to summon the Air Corps crash rescue service from Baldonnel to augment the water pressure in the prison. I venture to say that had we normal water pressure in Mountjoy on that night the gardaí on the rooftop would have been unable to hold the water hose. As a direct result of this riot the Minister is here today seeking a Supplementary Estimate of £2.234 million. I was present outside Mountjoy Jail on that night. What I saw frightened and shocked me. I never again want to see in this country anything of this nature.

Let me state categorically that these prisoners are in Mountjoy for a reason. They are in there because they have broken the law of the land and many of them have committed crimes against people and property. Many are toughened, hardened criminals serving substantial sentences at a huge cost to the State. Society has a right to be protected and the Government have a constitutional duty to protect society. Prisons must not be holiday homes. People who break the law must pay a price. Having said that, every person is entitled to basic human rights. In the thirties and early forties in mainland Europe millions of Jews lost their basic human rights under the Third Reich. Some of the conditions in Mountjoy are similar to those in a concentration camp. Prisoners are entitled to basic human rights and the Minister must provide them. He will recall that on 18 September 1991, I asked, following the tragic suicide in Clondalkin Garda Station, that all gardaí and prison trainee officers as part of their training spend three or four weeks working in psychiatric hospitals. I see no provision or suggestion in this Supplementary Estimate that this very necessary training will be introduced. This training period will save lives both in garda stations and in the prisons. It will enable gardaí and prison officers to recognise the "at risk" prisoner, that is, those who are a potential danger to themselves, those with alcohol or drug related problems, a previous history of psychiatric illness, the first time offender riddled with feelings of self guilt and those in poor physical health. In addition, I suggested that all gardaí and prison officers should attend regular refresher or, as euphemistically referred to now, in-service training courses in psychiatric community medicine.

The Minister is aware from figures and studies available to him that 40 per cent of all prison suicides are because of intolerable prison conditions and situations; 15 per cent are because of outside pressures; 13 per cent are because of feelings of self guilt; 30 per cent are because of psychiatric disorders and 10 per cent are for no reason at all. The suicide rate is four times higher in the prison population than in the civilian population and 90 per cent of all prison suicides are by hanging. Remand prisoners are especially vulnerable. Suicide rates in prisons are higher in summer — not because of the heat, I suspect, but because the courts take extended summer holidays. I would ask the Minister to look seriously at this problem. There have been 31 deaths of people in custody, most of which have been in Mountjoy, over the last ten years.

The report of the advisory committee on prison deaths must not be allowed to suffer the fate of the Whitaker report on penal reform, which was published six years ago and which, unbelievably, is still largely unimplemented. Twice in the last year I have written to the Minister requesting that I be allowed to visit Mountjoy Jail to see at first hand the conditions there. I wrote in my capacity as the elected Dáil Deputy for that area and I also wrote to him in my capacity as a member of the Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism. I have received a standard reply stating that in the fullness of time the committee will visit. To date I have not yet had the privilege to visit Mountjoy and I am asking the Minister once again to afford the elected public representative for Dublin Central an opportunity to do so.

I note that the main offsetting savings are in the probation and welfare service under the headings of recruitment for £238,000 and hostels, etc. for £474,000 making a grand total of £712,000. How, in the name of God, can the Minister justify savings of any sort in the probation and welfare services? In fact, the Minister should be spending more and more finance in this vitally important area. The failure to provide an adequate number of places for juvenile offenders is nothing short of criminal neglect according to Mr. Justice Wine. He said that in Dún Laoghaire District Court on 16 September the same day on which the riot in Mountjoy Jail broke out. He went on to say:

The State has caused real damage by its reckless delay in providing more detention centres.

He also said that:

The unnecessary and criminal delay has resulted in teenagers committing crime knowing that there is nowhere to send them. They have played the system.

An Ceann Comhairle

Will the Deputy please give the reference for his quotations?

Dr. Lee

This was reported in the Irish Independent of 17 September 1991. The Minister has placed this problem at the bottom of the pack. Our families, the elderly, the young and the middle-aged are entitled to protection. The number of juvenile offenders has increased alarmingly over the last two years. People from all strata of society have repeatedly called for the establishment of detention centres for offenders under the age of 17. The Minister has committed the Government to 65 extra detention places for young offenders by 1993 but Justice Wine has stated that there will be a need for 200 places by then and has warned that a fatality will have occurred by then. Justice Wine stressed the urgency of the problem saying that the Government are afraid to know of the numbers involved. The Government have been repeatedly warned but are not heeding anybody. The Government have been given many opportunities to overcome this problem and they must now accept the blame.

If properly served detention places were available and sufficient numbers of probation and welfare service officers were appointed this problem could have been nipped in the bud. For the last two years District Justice Wine has begged for safe places of detention which would provide corrective guidance and education for teenagers. Leading solicitors have accused the Government and the Department of gross neglect. For many years, young people have been left without any appropriate rehabilitation.

The Minister has achieved savings or cutbacks of the magnitude of £712,000 in the Probation and Welfare Service. As well as that, on May 7 this year the Minister announced the disbandment of all plain clothes crime prevention units in the Dublin Metropolitan area. This will probably rank as one of the Minister's greatest mistakes in his term of office. These units were highly successful and help in no small way to reduce teenage crime. They were disbanded to give the illusion of a highly visible presence of uninformed gardaí on the streets of Dublin for the tourist season. The decision was doomed to failure. These gardaí had been taken from the uninformed garda units to patrol areas in plain clothes and in unmarked patrol cars. They were assigned to high crime areas such as Store Street, Pearse Street, Kevin Street, Mountjoy and Fitzgibbon Street Garda stations. Drug units in Tallaght, Santry and in other areas were also depleted as a result of the Minister's directive although they had patrolled their areas, detecting and preventing crime as it happened on the street, both day and night. Their duties included observation and apprehension of suspected drug addicts, handbag snatchers, automobile thieves and so on. They were highly successful but the Minister in his wisdom disbanded them giving the flimsy excuse that there were internal operational difficulties in these units. The general secretary of the Garda association said that the Minister had taken away their most effective weapon against crime and was carrying out a major policy shift without any consultation.

Crime waves in this city and county are at epidemic levels. Last year 20,000 cars and £33 million worth of property were stolen by criminal gangs here. The proof that the Minister was wrong to disband the crime prevention units is that three months later the Minister found it necessary to re-introduce these units. All the Minister had succeeded in doing was writing a charter for the criminals for that period. The Minister was also successful in further lowering the morale of the members of a beleaguered under-staffed, under-financed Garda force. The Minister has also succeded in further lowering public confidence in the Garda force.

The Minister's contribution reminds me of an introduction to a speech I made on the motion of no confidence in Deputy O'Hanlon as Minister for Health, when I said that his treatise was an exercise in bluff, bluster, sanctimonious sham, pious platitudes and hypocrisy never before heard in the history of the State. The hyped up PR document written by the Minister and his advisers has all the hallmarks of a Bunny Carr inspired document for the potentially sincere. The Minister must take his medicine. As a medical doctor I insist that he does.

Mr. Bell

I will not try to match that contribution. It is unfortunate that the Minister had to come into the House to move that this additional expenditure be accepted. It would be wrong to blame any Minister for what happened at Mountjoy. There is responsibility on all sides of the House to close ranks in support of any Minister faced with this sort of problem. Like everyone else, I would much prefer if the Minister was coming into the House to tell us that he was going to spend £2.2 million in providing better facilities. I hope that, the next time we will debate Estimates of this sort, that is what the Minister will be in a position to do. We cannot blame the Minister or the system for a small minority of thugs who carry on in this way. Responsibility for the level and type of crime we have today goes further than one individual Member or any party in the House. Parents have responsibility to take a closer look at what their children are doing when they are roaming the streets smashing windows and committing crimes, for instance attacking elderly people. I will never have sympathy for people who did not have any sympathy for some of the old people whom they attacked. One hears of women of 76 years of age being raped and molested by these thugs. We should not have any sympathy for them. The State did not have any sympathy for some of the people in my constituency who were badly injured and left scarred for the rest of their lives. What about them? There must be a balance in this type of debate.

As it is very important, I would ask the Minister to arrange for Members of the House, particularly those of us who debate these subjects, to be given more regular opportunities to visit prisons. I know the Minister's Department made an arrangement for a visit to Wheatfield. Unfortunately, I missed that, through my own fault, but I would very much like to have seen that prison. It is important that those of us who have to speak on this subject be given a regular opportunity of seeing what we are talking about. That is the only way we can speak adequately about the subject.

There are visiting committees attached to prisons which are part and parcel of the local government system, but there is no facility for a group of TDs or Senators, or a combination of both, to make their own arrangements to go to a prison, talk to the prison officers and, perhaps, some of the prisoners, to see things at first hand and then come back and debate the matters. I do not feel qualified to talk about the conditions in Mountjoy because, apart from visiting individual prisoners for a specific purpose, I do not know what the system there is like. I do not know what caused these riots and, therefore, I am not in a position to lay the blame one way or the other.

I would not say for one minute that everything we read in the newspapers is 100 per cent accurate but I only know about conditions in Mountjoy from reports in the media. I would like to see Mountjoy and be able to come here and say if there is overcrowding or the conditions are bad. I gather from reports that the conditions are bad because of severe overcrowding, but I do not know. I do not know how many prisoners should be in Mountjoy or the sizes and types of cells within that prison. I did not have an opportunity to talk to any of the prisoners or representatives of the prisoners or of the people who have to work there. We are really having this discussion in a vacuum. I ask the Minister to make immediate arrangements for us to contact the Governor of Mountjoy and visit the prison. I do not see why Members of the Oireachtas who have to debate this subject, who vote on the moneys for prisons and for the payment of staff, should have to go through the whole rigmarole of going through the Department of Justice. It should not be necessary. It is vitally important that we should be able to debate the subject on the basis of knowledge of what is happening.

The Minister referred to the military detention centre in the Curragh. In the past, that has been used for different purposes than those now proposed. I do not think the Minister's suggestion is a bad idea. However, I know from personal experience over many years, not on the prison side but on the Army side, that a great deal of work will be required to bring that prison up to a reasonable standard. I agree certain categories of prisoners would not conform, no matter what conditions were provided for them. The previous speaker referred to holiday home conditions and even if they were provided they would not satisfy some prisoners. Rather than having the total prison population affected by a small number of people who, no matter what one does for them, will not conform, either inside or outside of prison, it is necessary to provide a separate unit where these prisoners could be more closely monitored. Such prisoners, if they could be identified, could be helped by way of education and back-up services. It is in that context that I support the proposal for the Curragh.

I agree entirely with the removal of the Army from Limerick Prison. The Army should only be used in emergencies. I can understand the necessity for the Army at Portlaoise and I am sure there is no proposal to remove the Army from there under present circumstances. However, the number of prisoners in the subversive category in Limerick does not justify the continuation of a military presence there. The Army are not prison warders and they are not policemen. Their role is only to back up the service provided by the Garda Síochána when required to do so. The argument here is not so much about the removal of the Army presence but rather that there will not be sufficient moneys provided to allow for the additional Garda overtime that would be required. The two are being lumped together. They should be dealt with separately. If the Garda have to provide additional hours of overtime they will have to be paid because they will not do it for nothing. That does not justify the continuation of an Army presence because the Army personnel have to be paid as well.

Like many other situations in the country at the moment, this is all about money. We cannot provide better facilities in the prisons unless we have the money to do so. Successive Governments have largely neglected the prison service. The prisons we have were not built to cope with the very substantial increase in serious crime. Nobody, in their wildest dreams, could have foreseen that the streets of Dublin, our urban areas and, indeed, the rural areas would be infested with the young thugs who are loose in our community. Nobody could have planned for that. Prisons built 50 years ago were not expected to cope with additional prisoners because the crime rate was not as high. If I had a row with one of my pals on the road and complained to my mother I got a belt of a stick. Things have changed very dramatically since then, but instead of giving out about the system, parents would be better off taking care of the children, getting them off the streets rather than letting them roam around all hours of the night creating problems for everybody. We must get our facts right. We cannot blame the Minister for everything. Unfortunately, the Minister of the day, whoever he may be, has to carry the can. I understand that but it should be within certain limits. No Minister could be blamed for what happened in Mountjoy or for what happens in the prisons in the UK. No matter what the conditions are prisoners are not justified in creating £2.2 million worth of damage to public property. No matter who the Minister is, he cannot be held responsible for that. What is he supposed to do? Sit in Mountjoy and wait for prisoners to climb up on the roof?

I had intended to make a number of other points but I was prompted to make these few points instead. It is unfortunate that we have this morning to debate the spending of £2.2 million of taxpayers' money to repair the damage caused by a number of thugs. It would be far better to spend that £2.2 million in providing better facilities and back-up services. That is what, collectively, we should aim to do.

Mr. McCartan

It should be appreciated that for the first time since the Minister took office, he has announced in this Chamber a major innovation, departure or change in the regime in the prison service. I hope nonetheless, having taken me by surprise — I do not know about other Deputies — with regard to the reopening of the Curragh military detention centre, that he will realise that our remarks must be immediate and somewhat reactive to what has been announced.

I have long experience of that dismal, horrible place in the Curragh. I visited it on many occasions when it was used previously as an isolation unit. It failed to achieve its purpose not because it is a civilian prison policed by Army personnel but because it is isolated, bleak, remote and unsuitable as a unit to house long term prisoners. One of the indelible features of the problem the Minister is trying to address is that the people involved are serving long sentences. The glasshouse in the Curragh was built initially to house offenders within the military service who served weeks and months as opposed to years in detention. The Curragh failed because it was isolated, claustrophobic and unsuited as a unit to house long term prisoners, and no amount of reorganisation will improve the position. I urge the Minister therefore, which is all I can do this morning, appreciating the fact that the he is making his intentions known in the House, in the first instance, to have a rethink on the matter.

I note that prison officers will be working there as opposed to military personal. I do not know whether the ink has dried yet on the agreement reached with the Prison Officers' Association, that they will provide a complement of men and women to go there, but I can envisage major reservations being expressed even from that quarter.

As I said, one of the problems with the Curragh, above and beyond the fact that it is unsuitable as a unit in which to incarcerate long term prisoners, is that it is isolated. I remember as a young solicitor when I had no car having difficulty in getting to the Curragh by public transport to visit clients there. Another difficulty is that, even though the unit will be staffed by prison officers, one will be stopped by Army personnel on entering the Curragh Camp, conducted to a waiting room, conveyed to the unit by military personnel because it is buried in the heart of the military camp and then taken back out. Even this minor encounter with military personnel will, for the uninitiated, prove very intimidating and unwelcome. The military are not equipped or accustomed to dealing with civilians and civilian business in their everyday pursuits.

In this context, I have to ask the Minister about the isolation unit which was provided in Mountjoy Prison for this purpose when the Curragh had to be closed because of its unsuitability? I ask the Minister to read the proceedings of the MacBride Commission — I was one of its patrons — which in the late seventies and early eighties singularly condemned the Curragh military detention centre as unfit to house civilian prisoners, irrespective of who staffed it. I cannot put the matter in more trenchant terms.

I accept the proposition that there are prisoners who at times are bent on causing disruption and that it is better to isolate them. However it was always possible within the existing prisons to put trouble makers in solitary confinement in the short term. Collectively isolating a number of prisoners on a long term basis will make them more determined trouble makers and heroes in the misguided judgment of many others in the prison population. It was for a time pejoratively described as the "university" of the prison system, and people will, for all the wrong reasons, do what is necessary to graduate and seek admission to the so-called "university".

I ask the Minister to tell us what has happened to the policy of isolating trouble makers on a short term basis and what about the isolation unit in Mountjoy Prison which I understand was used to house HIV prisoners? How will this space be used when the new unit for HIV prisoners is opened?

It should be said in this context that the trouble makers are primarily to be found in Mountjoy Prison. Indeed almost all the people sent to the Curragh came from Mountjoy Prison and that is where they will come from in the future. Would it not be better to provide an isolation unit within that prison rather than set up a higher level institution in the Curragh which, as I said, will be greatly resented by those who have to travel and visit prisoners there, which will be unsuitable as a unit to incarcerate prisoners and negate what the Minister is attempting to achieve? I urge the Minister to think again and I say this as someone who has direct experience of that institution when it was used previously for this purpose.

This Supplementary Estimate arises directly from the additional salary and repair costs arising from disturbances in Mountjoy and Limerick Prisons, especially the serious riot which occurred in Mountjoy Prison in September last. Mountjoy and Limerick Prison are two of the oldest prisons in the country with the poorest and most unhygienic conditions. They have been the source of repeated disturbances and will continue to be a source of trouble until something is done about the conditions there.

We now have modern prison, like Arbour Hill and Wheatfield, and I am sure that it has not and cannot escape the notice of the Minister that these institutions have managed to escape the sort of violence which has been an unfortunate feature of prison life in Mountjoy and Limerick. The lessons are clear: treat prisoners with some dignity and give them conditions which are decent and humane and the vast majority will serve out their sentences without any great trouble. However if we dump them into overcrowded, insanitary and inhuman conditions we will create a powder keg which will explode in our faces time and again.

For these reasons, the Minister for Justice must accept a major portion of the blame for the riots in Mountjoy and Limerick Prisons earlier this year. He continued to ignore obvious warning signs that trouble was brewing. His attempts to suggest that both outbursts were mindless and without reason do not deal with the recurring problems of these two institutions.

The Minister repeated that line in his speech today and I quote:

At no stage of the disturbance did the prisoners put forward any complaints of real substance and it is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that the disturbance simply represented a challenge to good order in the prisons and to the institutions of State.

I do not accept that simplistic, dismissive reaction to what happened in Mountjoy and Limerick Prisons earlier this year. That is not to suggest that I condone, excuse or exonerate what happened. I believe that those who were involved did a grave injustice to the management of the service in Mountjoy Prison. They have wasted substantial moneys which could have been spent elsewhere in the service. Nonetheless the reasons for doing what they did are far more complex than suggesting their behaviour was mindless and merely geared towards undermining the good order of the prisons and the State. The Minister will have to learn that verbal abuse of prisoners, no matter how disruptive or destructive they prove to be, will never substitute for action on a proper policy of prison reform. The Minister has a blueprint for what action or reforms within the prison system should be. He and his officials have had the Whitaker Report on Penal Reform since July 1985. It is necessary again and again in any debate in this House on matters relating to prisons for Deputies to reach for the report and to forcefully remind the Minister for Justice of its observations, fears and recommendations. At page 242, in relation to Mountjoy Prison, the report said:

The two biggest institutions, Mountjoy (men's and women's) and St. Patrick's, which are located side by side, are old and in poor condition, very little having been done to modernise them. Space in them for work, education, welfare services and indoor recreation is inadequate.

The report goes on, in pages 124 and 125, to strongly advocate the establishment of a prison's board under the guidance of a director as chief executive with an operations manager responsible for overall planning and development of prisons and their construction or refurbishment. Centralised planning by an independent authority is recommended, something which is not hampered by the bureaucratic machinations of the Department of Justice. In addition, on page 126, an independent inspector of prisons is recommended. If the Minister had acted on these fundamental reform proposals I am confident that the troubles at both prisons would have been avoided and, if not, at least detected and acted upon in good time.

The Minister imparted other interesting information with regard to the Estimate before us. For example, he pointed out that £14 million will be expended this year in overtime to officers working in the prison service. That tells its own story. Again, if he had read the Whitaker report and acted upon any of the recommendations in regard to staff management relationships and work rostering, this kind of overtime would not be required. Prison officers must work overtime on a compulsory basis. The compulsion represents a massive accumulation of hours of work which are unsocial. Coupled with that, one must realise that the conditions, which are so draconian and Victorian from the point of view of the prisoner, have an equally negative impact on the people who are asked to work within them. That accounts for the massive absenteeism which the Minister highlighted in his speech; it is because of the unsocial hours involving compulsory overtime and the very poor conditions in which they have to work. People simply cannot keep up the roster of work required of them under the pressures and conditions which exist.

I am amazed at the statistics the Minister gave. He said that, because the number of prisoners rose in the period 1986-91 by a little over 300, we must increase our prison staff by almost 200. That surely reflects a very poor management staff reorganisation within the prison service and it also highlights that our prison security and operational system are totally antiquated, primarily because the prisons themselves are, by and large, antiquated and of another era. If you increase the complement of prisoners in Mountjoy by, say, 100 you should not automatically increase the number of staff, which has been suggested by the Minister. The reasons for the requirement of more staff are that every gate must be opened by a key, every entry in a book must be by hand and every meal delivered on a trolley pushed by a prison officer. As the Whitaker report said, there is a total absence of any modernisation. There is no computerisation of records, the ancient ledgers are still being pulled out, slapped on desks, and officers required to enter every conceivable detail about prison happenings under the 1947 rules. People who came in and out of the gate must be written in three and four times before they are allowed to visit. That is why we need a massive increase in the numbers of staff and why so many hours of overtime are needed. The way to combat the problem is by modernising the mechanisms, computerisation of records and the introduction of a regime within the prisons which reflects modern technology and devices.

The Minister also referred to the unit which will be open shortly to house prisoners with communicable diseases. Access or admission to, or incarceration in that unit, must be on a voluntary basis. It must involve consent. The problem is — and I raised this matter with the Minister recently — that when you carry out screening, identify someone as being HIV positive and automatically deposit them in this unit, you are immediately breaching doctor-client relationships and confidentiality. It is a problem which has manifested itself in the case of a number of prisoners who have refused to undergo necessary screening and testing because they do not want the world and his wife to know that, unfortunately, they are carrying the HIV virus in a positive or full blown state. They have the right to privacy and, as a prisoner, should not lose it. Having said that, there are a number of prisoners who for their own good, and perhaps to avoid odium from others, are anxious to be in an isolated unit and such a facility will be provided for them. However, I repeat that it must be with the consent of the prisoner.

The other interesting statistic to which the Minister referred is that there are 5,200 people in the community who are there as an alternative to custody. That is nonsense. There may be 5,200 people in the county who have been fined, given a suspended sentence or served with a community order, but imprisonment was never an option for the vast majority of them. The Minister should not use figures to suggest this.

On behalf of The Workers' Party I reject this Estimate and must vote against it because of the unbelievable admission that in one single year the Minister has been unable to spend the moneys allocated to him for the probation and welfare services and hostel provisions for people coming out of prisons. Savings of almost £1 million were made by the Minister in this area. Contrast his failure to recruit probation and welfare officers with his ability to recruit 169 prison officers. What is the difficulty? There are a vast number of graduates from the social science departments of universities coming into the main stream of our employment every year and there should not be the slightest difficulty in recruiting staff with the moneys available to him. The Minister wants to pay over £200 million in overtime to prison officers by partly cutting moneys to the welfare and probationary services. It is a scandalous request. It can only have been proposed in the first place because the Minister, instead of doing what he promised, has failed to spend an allocation of funds available to him in this area. The Workers' Party cannot agree to an Estimate which proposes the taking of one penny from this cash-starved area, namely, the prison service, and for that reason we will be opposing this proposition in the House today.

Mr. Shatter

With all members of the Fine Gael Party I condemn the approach taken by the prisoners in Mountjoy who rioted and caused wanton destruction. It behoves us when events of that nature take place to congratulate the Garda, the Army and the prison staff for their approach in trying to resolve the problem. We regret they had to face such a problem within the prison service. It is only right that we say to the Minister that that type of problem should not arise again within our prisons. I have one major reservation about the Minister's speech in the context of what took place in Mountjoy Prison. There is always the problem, when an event of that nature takes place, of trying to ascertain why it took place and of bureaucracy, be it within the Minister's Department or the Minister himself, trying to save face and ensure that nothing emerges to indicate that any fault can rest on the Minister's shoulders or those of his advisers.

It is salutary to observe what happens in other countries when events such as the riot in Mountjoy take place. It is customary that there be an inquiry by an independent source to investigate why a prison riot took place, what difficulties could have contributed to the riot and what measures should be taken to ensure there is no repetition. A judge of the High Court should have been appointed to examine the background to the Mountjoy Prison riot and to produce a report that would be made public, containing recommendations to ensure that there will be no repetition of such riot and to update the Whitaker report in the light of changes that have taken place in Mountjoy and St. Patrick's Institution. Perhaps some such recommendations could be implemented to ensure we do not face this problem again.

The Minister is too defensive about this matter. There is always a difficulty for a public representative who suggests there might be reasons for such a riot in that it might be suggested that he is in some way soft on crime or he is giving excuses to prisoners to behave in an unacceptable way. I emphasise that, whatever problems exist in Mountjoy, I do not accept there was any excuse for the riot or the wanton destruction that took place. I am not suggesting that any difficulties that need to be addressed could justify what took place. However we cannot bury our heads in the sand and say this is something that emerged out of a vacuum. I do not believe it emerged out of a vacuum because there are reasons for it. There are also political reasons as to why the full background to the riot is not examined and why the Minister adopts the approach referred to by Deputies McCartan and Lee of simply condemning the prisoners and not looking behind the problem. That is much too easy to do. My concerns in this regard are added to by the Minister's lack of enthusiasm to publish the reports of the Mountjoy Prison Visiting Committee on an annual basis shortly after they are made available to the Department.

I am not happy that this type of incident will not take place again. There should have been a judicial inquiry into the background to the Mountjoy Prison riot. I still believe such an inquiry could take place and I ask the Minister to provide for that. If a judicial inquiry produces the same comment as that of the Minister, that this riot should not have happened, that it arose out of a vacuum and that it was an attempt to challenge the authority of the State, so be it. However, I believe the reasons for it are more complex. While steps are being taken to modernise parts of our prison system there is certainly a problem with the pace of those changes in the context of the conditions within Mountjoy, which not only have an impact on the behaviour of prisoners but clearly, from discussions I have had from time to time with people who work in the prison service, they impact on the morale of the prison staff. I have no doubt that the problem of absenteeism referred to by the Minister derives from that.

The cost of running the prison service calls for comment. I am not suggesting that anyone who is in prison is enjoying life there or is having a luxurious time as the conditions in some prisons can be described as Dickensian. Nevertheless it is a source of amazement that a person can get full board accommodation in the Berkeley Court Hotel for a week at less than the cost of keeping a prisoner in prison for one week. There is something wrong with that system. The Minister made the case in his speech that many people who are imprisoned do not want to get caught up in riots and do not want to face problems but rather want to serve their sentences in peace and return to society. I am firmly of the view that prison has a role to play in that if people behave in a criminal way they are made serve time to society. Prison acts as a disincentive to a repetition of the behaviour that resulted in their being sentenced.

I am also of the view that we are not using the community service order scheme as extensively as we could. There could be fewer people in prison at less cost to the State if some of those people were given useful work while being supervised under the community service order scheme. As a result they would be putting something back into the community rather than being a charge on the State. That would make them understand that the conduct that resulted in their sentencing was unacceptable and that they deserved to compensate society for their actions.

I am concerned about the transfer of moneys from the probation and welfare service in the manner provided for in the Supplementary Estimate. The Minister said that during this year 750 people have done community service work. Will the Minister indicate whether there is a limit to the number of persons who can take part in community service order schemes on the basis of the numbers available through the probation and welfare service or otherwise to supervise such works. The money would be better spent by requiring people convicted of minor offences to carry out community service work than by putting them in prison. I ask the Minister to have another look at the operation of the community service order scheme. I would like an assurance that the constraints on the resources available to the probation and welfare service are not limiting the number of offenders who may be given a community service order, resulting in people who would otherwise do community service ending up in prison.

I am also concerned about a serious omission in the Minister's speech. Over the past two and a half years we have had an increasing number of instances where district justices have highlighted cases of unruly persons under 16 years of age being convicted of multiple offences for whom there is no appropriate place of detention. District Justice Garavan and District Justice Wine, to name just two, have regularly highlighted this problem. Promises have emanated from the Departments of Justice and Education that additional new facilities would be made available, but the dates on which they will be made available are constantly shifting. From memory I think I am right in saying that the Garda in Waterford brought some young people before the District Court who were charged with 105 alleged offences, but the court said there was nowhere to put these people if a custodial sentence was required. That is adding to the crime wave. The ordinary person in the street views the increasing level of crime in Dublin as a crisis and this is exacerbated by the fact that people committing crime feel it is open season. They believe that, if they are caught and brought before the courts, the courts have no option but to release them into the community without a penalty of any substantial nature being imposed. That is having a demoralising effect on the Garda. This problem is not being addressed. I would be happy to see the Minister coming before us with a Supplementary Estimate for the provision of new facilities that would open immediately. These facilities do not exist although they have been promised constantly.

It is only right that we should pay tribute to the judges on the District Court bench who have constantly and regularly highlighted the problem and who on occasions have demanded that officials from Government Departments come into the courts to explain the position. Why are we wasting the time of the Garda Síochána and the district justices if we are not providing facilities to enforce the sentences which they believe are necessary in order to protect the general public from these unruly people who are engaged in multiple offending, and for whom we currently have no facilities?

I am sure that I am not unique among Members in receiving from time to time correspondence from people held in our prisons who protest their innocence and say they were wrongly convicted. They may indicate they were convicted due to the fact that they were poorly represented by the legal profession, that some crucial witness were not available to speak on their behalf or that new evidence has now become available which was not available at the time of their trial and which would clearly establish their innocence. I am well aware of the fact also that a great many people who come before the courts protesting their innocence are quite properly sentenced for committing those offences. Any Member may have a difficulty in dealing with such correspondence. Indeed some of the people who write to Deputies may have been rightly and properly convicted, but some may be innocent. Some letters may come from people who have been genuinely done an injustice and at present we have no mechanism to tackle that problem. The case can be put very starkly if described in this way: if through an error in our judicial system the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four had been sentenced to extended terms of imprisonment by the Irish courts, they would still today be in prison because we do not have the mechanisms that eventually proved successful — although some were critical of the length of time it took — in having those people released from prison.

There are reports on this and I do not wish to labour the point at this time, because the debate is about the prison system and not about new legislation. However, when talking about the money invested in the prison system it would be wrong to ignore this issue. It is a matter of great urgency that the Minister should put in place a procedure — which I believe should have a statutory backing as it may involve creating a new court or giving new powers to the existing courts — to allow the courts to have another look at cases where there is alleged wrongful conviction, particularly in circumstances where new evidence has emerged subsequent to the convictions. Let us not fall under the illusion that our Judiciary, the criminal justice system and the jury system are infallible. Our system of justice is just as fallible as the justice system in any other jurisdiction. Indeed it does not take an awful lot of imagination to imagine the frustration and despair of a person who is genuinely innocent and finds himself convicted and sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment. We are failing in our duty as legislators by not putting in place a mechanism to address this problem.

I am greatly perturbed by the fact that when one receives such letters one cannot do very much. One can pass them on to the Minister for Justice and ask him to look into the matter, but the Minister quite rightly will say that the Department cannot interfere with a decision of the court. We criticised the United Kingdom for not properly addressing that issue when citizens of this State were in English prisons. They at least had a statutory mechanism which allowed the matter to be looked into and investigated, but we do not have such a procedure. It is recognised by Members from all parties that this issue needs to be addressed; but the small number of people affected do not form a political constituency and, generally speaking, if someone is convicted of a crime he rightly gets very little sympathy from the general public outside this House. I ask the Minister to address this problem. I have raised the matter in a constructive way and I hope that the Minister will respond to it. It can be rightly said that different administrations over the years should have put such a mechanism in place. I recollect that when this House was addressing issues relating to the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six there were indications that the Government of the day were considering legislating in this area, but we have heard very little about it in recent times.

The prison officers and the Garda who assist them in the prison service deserve our praise and thanks for the work they do. I acknowledge that absenteeism is a problem in the prison service. I suggest to the Minister that this problem could be resolved by allowing prison staff a working week of fewer hours than at present because of the pressures they find themselves under. That solution could cost the State money but it may be less than the cost of absenteeism among staff. A shorter working week would recognise that absenteeism among prison staff arises from the pressure-house conditions attached to working in the prison service and that in terms of pressure the jobs of prison staff are not normal or ordinary. Indeed, to some extent, prison wardens and prison officers come under greater pressure on a minute to minute basis than either the gardaí or the army, who also work in the service of the State.

Mr. Burke

I thank Members who contributed to the debate. I shall try to respond to at least some of the points made. I regret that Dr. Lee took the high rhetorical road in his contribution but, leaving aside some of the personal remarks he made, I shall respond to the general issues he raised.

I shall give a little of the background to the riot at Mountjoy. The issue started on 15 September when six prisoners climbed on to the roof, that afternoon being the afternoon of the all-Ireland final. The attitude taken was one that has proved to be successful in other cases, that of sitting them out. That policy had proved to be successful in Limerick earlier in the same week but on the occasion in question only one prisoner came down off the roof the following morning. On the afternoon of 16 September another 66 prisoners managed to climb on to the roof from an exercise yard, having attacked prison officers.

I make no apology to anybody for the actions I took that evening. I commend the loyalty, the support and the heroism shown on that occasion by prison officers and by the gardaí and the Army who were called in. I thank tha Army, the gardaí and the prison officers for the manner in which hey handled the incident.

The House should consider what was involved. There were 71 prisoners on he roof. By 9 o'clock that night, because of the co-operation of the Army and the loyalty and heroism of the prison staff, gardaí and Army the incident was under control; the prisoners were off the roof. The prisoners had caused damage, and to pay for that damage a Supplementary Estimate has to be introduced in the House today, but they were off the roof.

I ask any fairminded Member or Irish society generally to compare that incident with what happened in other jurisdictions, because we have had references to other jurisdictions in the debate this morning.

That is not to say that all is the way we would like it in Mountjoy. I have never claimed that conditions in the prison system are perfect, but no deficiency would justify the appalling behaviour of the prisoners who took part in the riot. At no stage did the prisoners put forward any complaint of real substance. I can only conclude that they were engaged in a direct challenge to the good order of the prison and to the institutions of the State. I have listed the improvements planned for the prison system, and violent actions by prisoners serve only to waste scarce resources and delay constructive work.

Deputy Lee said he was keen to visit the prison and Deputy Bell, who took a very constructive approach, also suggested a visit to the prison. My attitude to that idea is that as a select Committee on Crime operate within the House it would be better to organise a visit through that committee — or at least to have three, four or five Deputies go together — rather than have Deputies make individual visits to the prison. My reasons for that are in consideration of the good running order within prisons and that it would be better to prevent all of the distruption that would occur by many separate visits taking place. An organised visit would make good sense from everyone's point of view.

Deputy Lee asked whether he could go to the prison just after the riot of 16 September. The day after the riot was a particularly tense time. At that stage attempts were being made to tidy up the prison after the damage caused by the slates that were fired at prison staff, gardaí and Army personnel. Attempts were being made to bring contractors in and have the prison reroofed. The atmosphere in the prison itself was very tense. I acknowledge that Deputy Lee asked to visit the prison on another occasion also. I have no objection to prison visits by Members of the House, I welcome them. In the past I have arranged such visits both to Wheatfield and to St. Patrick's. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Women's Rights visited St. Patrick's before renovations were carried out there and since the renovation work.

I wish to make it clear that I shall arrange either with the Select Committee on Crime or whichever system is organised through the Whips — that being the way it was done on the previous occasion — a visit of nominated Members from the various parties to go to any of the prisons at any time, so long as it is not at a time of high tension. Commonsense would advise that at such times there should be the least possible disruption.

I should like to say to Deputy Bell that I welcome his constructive approach. A visit should be arranged through the Select Committee on Crime but if that is not suitable arrangements could be made through the Whips for several spokes-persons or any other grouping of Deputies. That has been done before and I welcomed it.

Mr. McCartan

I was about to suggest that Members interested might be brought to the Curragh to see the unit proposed before it opens.

Mr. Burke

That is a matter for the future. When the unit is ready to be opened I will have no difficulty with that proposal.

Mr. McCartan

Before the Minister spends the money, for God's sake.

Mr. Burke

That is a decision for the Government. We make the decisions and Deputies may make their visits after.

The question of places for young offenders was mentioned. My Department cater for the detention of young male offenders aged 16 years and over and of young female offenders aged 17 years and over. Offenders under those ages cannot be sent to prison or places of detention operated by my Department except in the special circumstances provided for in sections 97 and 102 of the Children's Act, 1908. I am satisfied that the range and level of accommodation available for young offenders for which my Department are responsible are adequate and at present there are no plans for the provision of additional accommodation for them.

The court may commit young offenders between the ages of 12 and 17 to special schools. The provision for special school accommodation for young offenders is a matter for my colleague the Minister for Education, who has had the former Scoil Ard Mhuire premises in Lusk refurbished to provide an additional 36 places for boys and an additional eight places for girls. Fourteen additional places for boys and four additional places for girls became available in September 1991 and arrangements are being made by the Department of Education to have the remaining places brought onstream as soon as possible.

It is important to remember that in that context we are talking about 12 to 17 year olds. I have always been of the opinion that they are appropriately dealt with in the environment of the Department of Education special schools rather than being introduced into the prison system at that age. It is better that we try to change them from their ways in the early days rather than put them into the prison environment. There are approximately 200 places available throughout the school system for young offenders.

Mention has been made of suicides in prisons. Because of my concern about prison suicides, last year I set up an expert group to advise me on the problem. I recently published their report. The recommendation in the report will form the basis for future policy in dealing with prison suicides. A number of these recommendations have been implemented already and welcomed by those involved in this area.

Deputy Bell also mentioned the Curragh. I acknowledge that work must be done to bring the unit there to a reasonable standard. That work will be done. I visited the Curragh yesterday evening and inspected the prison there, in company with the military, the Secretary of my Department and Assistant Secretary responsible for the prison system, when we carried out a complete survey. Other officials had visited the Curragh during the week carrying out a detailed survey of the work needing to be undertaken. I can assure the Deputy and Members generally that whatever is required to bring the Curragh up to a reasonable standard will be done, including a commitment that I willingly give the House now that there will be toilet facilities available on a 24-hour basis in that unit there, not in the cells, but that prisoners brought down there will have access to toilets on a 24-hour basis, which is important.

I thank Deputy Bell for his understanding and support for the change that has taken place in Limerick. It is a reasonable recognition of the changed circumstances from the time the Army were put in there right up to the present day. Again, I want to assure the House and the general public that these matters are kept under constant review and, if circumstances change, the position will be altered accordingly.

I also want to assure Deputy Bell that there is no proposal to remove the Army from Portlaoise, where prisoners who have been involved in various terrorist activities here are accommodated. We see the need for the backup of the Army for the civil power and authorities, that is, the prison authorities and the Garda. We see the necessity for that backup in Portlaoise and that will be the position obtaining there for the foreseeable future.

With regard to Deputy McCartan's point in relation to the Curragh, I should say that the Army were in place on the last occasion this prison was used. I want to emphasise that there will be no Army involvement this time round, that it will be run as a civilian unit. Yes, it is isolated; yes, it is bleak; yes, it is remote. but I ask the House to consider the position of those who have been the victims of crime. They suffer many a bleak night after their homes may have been broken into or they have been attacked. They suffer isolation of the mind, the worry and concern about the crimes that have been perpetrated and the damage done to them. Yes, the unit is remote; but I can assure the House that arrangements will be made for proper family visits to the prison.

However, I believe victims' rights must be examined here, the rights of society, of taxpayers? We are discussing a Supplementary Estimate here this morning for millions of pounds because of riots perpetrated by people who have no legitimate complaint about their conditions, who involve themselves in crimes endangering the lives and limbs of our Garda, prison officers and Army personnel, as was the case in the riots in Mountjoy Prison. What about the taxpayer who must foot the bill? What about the victims of those involved in the perpetration of such crimes? I should stress it is not a holiday camp that is being opened in the Curragh and neither is it intended to be. Nonetheless I can assure Members that prisoners who will be accommodated in the Curragh will be treated in a humane manner with facilities available to them. But I must stress that they have a responsibility for their crimes, a responsibility to society.

I have called constantly, within and without this House, for extra spaces within the prison system. This unit will give me 47 important extra spaces. I will have extra spaces available also next summer when the old separation block will again become available within Mountjoy Prison. I will have the specially built HIV unit which will give me an additional 50 odd places. All of these places are important by way of reassurance to the general public that they will be defended by society, by the institutions of the State, against those who would purport to attack them and take away their rights to walk our streets and go about their business free from the threat of crime.

Mr. McCartan

How much will the Curragh cost?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister in full flight but the order of the House allows him ten minutes only.

Mr. Burke

There were many points raised by Deputies. I assure them I have taken note of them all and will respond to them as far as possible in future policy within the system.

I might deal with the last point made by Deputy Shatter in relation to the fallibility of our courts system. We have an excellent courts system which has been proven to be independent, effective and wise in judgments handed down since the foundation of the State. I reject any suggestion of comparison with other courts systems — for example, cases where we have witnessed such major mistakes as occurred vis-à-vis the Birmingham Six and the Guilford Four. Nonetheless that does not mean there is not room for improvement. Indeed it was with that in mind I established the Martin Committee to investigate the overall position and whose report is receiving very careful, detailed and immediate consideration. Such consideration must be detailed because its implications for the whole of our judicial system are quite extensive. I can assure the House we will not be found wanting in implementing whatever changes are deemed to be necessary.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I must now put the question: "That the Supplementary Estimate be agreed to."

Mr. McCartan

Votáil.

A division being demanded, the taking of the division was postponed until 6.45 on Wednesday, 11 December in accordance with an order of the Dáil.