Prison reform has never been a particularly popular issue. As far back as 1985, the Whitaker report cognitively analysed the problems of the penal system. Yet, nothing was done. For seven long years, from 1987 to 1994, Fianna Fáil ran the country. For three of those years it was joined by the Progressive Democrats. Yet, it implemented no significant changes in the penal system.
The reality is that the Opposition parties have produced simplistic proposals. When in Government it did nothing. In contrast, the Fine Gael Front Bench and Young Fine Gael produced a detailed penal reform policy. In Government the Minister for Justice, Deputy Owen, has attempted to address the issue seriously. We have the largest prison building programme since the foundation of the State, involving the provision of around 800 extra places; a review of the operating costs of prisons by a group chaired by the former secretary of the Department of Education, Mr. Declan Brennan; a Government commitment to establish an independent prisons board and extensive measures to tackle the drugs problem in prison. This represents real progress but none of us should be in any doubt that more needs to be done, both inside and outside our prisons.
For a start, nobody should be sent to prison if there is a suitable alternative but, for somebody who must be contained for the good of society, there must be a place. On the number of prison places, while the current investment programme of over £135 million between 1996-9 is most welcome, further expenditure will be necessary. We must face the, reality that most of our prisons are too old and overcrowded to form the basis of a 21st century prison system. Further new prisons on the model of Wheatfield, while expensive to build, are essential.
When the current programme of prison building is complete, a new phase should commence. We need to analyse the facilities we should build and how we will finance them. Ultimately, it is only when we, the legislators, are prepared to give an ongoing financial commitment to prison reform that we will make real progress. Inside our prisons the serious problem of drug taking is being addressed by the ministerial task force but the scale of the problem is frightening. A recent survey showed that over 70 per cent of prisoners in Mountjoy Prison have a history of drug abuse. The figure of nearly 500 drugs seizures in 1996 over a nine week period bears testimony to the scale of the problem. People are going into prison without a drugs problem and coming out with one. There are no easy or cheap solutions to this or other prison problems. The new drug free unit in Mountjoy Prison, with preventative and detention measures in the visiting areas, help, but until we have proper treatment facilities and prevention through education and rehabilitation programmes both inside and outside prisons we will not succeed. Reform will not come cheaply but without it society will eventually explode.
It is appropriate that we debate this issue in the national Parliament in the centre of Dublin because 75 per cent of prisoners in Mountjoy Prison come from just five deprived areas in the capital. For too long penal reform has been viewed as a question of prison and sentencing policy but if we really want to tackle crime and reform the prisons then we must go to the root of the problem. The 1985 Whitaker report clearly stated that much of the crime prevailing in modern Ireland appeared to be related to moral, demographic, social and economic change, especially the transformation of Irish society from being mainly rural to mainly urban and the concentration in the cities of growing numbers of young unemployed.
In the inner cities many young people leave school with no qualification and are condemned to long-term unemployment. Among them are the future inmates of Mountjoy Prison where just 11 per cent of prisoners have had experience of school beyond the age of 16. I hear glib proposals to solve the crime and prison problems and of the need for tax cuts and lower public spending, but I do not hear much talk of social justice and the need to fund programmes to make it a reality. The people in these deprived areas are no worse than people in better off areas. They do not care any less for their children's education and future but, worn down by lack of facilities, employment or hope, some lose their will to live or can only do so with the crutch of drugs which then drag them into crime as the only way to feed their habit. We must break this cycle.
We started that process, in particular, through the £110 million local development programme between now and the end of 1999, for which I have ministerial responsibility. Local development is about empowering local communities in deprived areas. It is about local communities analysing their own problems and proposing community-based solutions in partnership with the State, State agencies and the social partners. These local action plans give the long-term unemployed, the disadvantaged and the early school-leavers a new opportunity. Educational and training opportunities, employment in one to five person enterprises, environmental improvement and estate management training for tenants are the elements of this second chance.
Other initiatives are also under way, such as the £21 million urban programme in north Cork, west Tallaght-Clondalkin, Ballymun-Darndale-Finglas; the £10 million package for demand reduction measures in relation to drugs agreed arising from the ministerial task Force; the initiatives by the Department of Education to target resources at schools in deprived areas; and the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1996, which will allow for better local authority estate management. In two short years great strides have been made but, in truth, much remains to be done and it will not come cheaply.
Money, however, is a relative thing. I hear talk incessantly about the cost of things but rarely about their value. Can we put a price on an old person's peace of mind in an area where crime has been reduced? Can we put a price on the joy of a parent that a child is fulfilling his or her educational dreams? Can we put a price on the satisfaction of a person who gets an honest day's pay for an honest day's work? We can put a price on the cost of keeping a person in prison; it may be as much as £80,000 a year. We can put a price on putting a youth into care in a special school for delinquent young people; it is in the order of £74,000 a year. We can put figures on the lack of educational achievement. Sixty per cent of those attending drug treatment centres in Dublin in 1994 had left school either before the official school-leaving age of 15 or at that age. Would it not make more sense to allocate resources to education now rather than having to pay detention costs later?
We do not live in a society where there is equality of educational opportunity. University, in the recent words of the Provost of TCD, is a no go area for young people in large areas of Dublin's Inner city. Students from low income homes are 18 times less likely to attend university than those from wealthier families. If we really want to stem the flow to our prisons, then we must be relentless in our pursuit of social justice and in tackling the problems of poverty in the ghettos which scar our community. When will the Opposition put the Government under pressure to advance social justice? There has been no sign from the Opposition benches that there is due concern in this regard.
The plans are there. What is needed is to drive them and commit resources to make them a reality. We need to deal with the teacher-pupil ratio, particularly in inner city schools. We need to run home-school liaison and school counselling services on a scale which helps to tackle the problem. We need to build youth and sport facilities along the lines of the sports strategy published by my colleague, the Minister with responsibility for sport, yester-day. We need training programmes and, crucially, we need localised drug treatment facilities. These are the ways to tackle this serious problem.
Progress has been made under this Minister but it is time this House had greater concern for social justice and the value of reform rather than simply its cost. It is time we stopped scoring points off each other on prison facilities. We know the prison system needs to be reformed. The appointment of an independent prisons board is a great start and the Minister for Justice has done a great public service in that regard.
