Vol. 502 No. 1
93 Mr. Spring asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the strategies employed to make prisons drug free; if he has satisfied himself with the progress in this issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7218/99]
It is the absolute policy of my Department to take all reasonable measures that may be required to prevent drugs getting into prisons. The Department recognises, however, that in line with worldwide experience despite best endeavours and applying best operational practice some contraband may, from time to time, be brought inside. It may not be possible within any set of arrangements that can be defended on human rights grounds, to detect all attempts to get contraband through prison controls. The level of contraband getting into the prisons must be kept to the absolute minimum and even this level of contraband can present serious difficulties for the prisons administration and prisoners alike, not least in the area of health care. That being the case, it is clearly incumbent on my Department, to have in place an action plan which draws on the best medical advice available in this area and which addresses the health care and other issues that are associated with the misuse of drugs in prisons. It is important to emphasise again that the existence of the action plan does not in any way signal any tolerance and acceptance of the presence or misuse of drugs in prisons, nor does it signal any dilution in the basic policy of prevention. It represents a measured and responsible response to the reality that contraband sometimes gets through and nothing more than that.
The abuse of drugs within the prison system is confined largely to the committal institutions in the Dublin area. The problem is most acute in Mountjoy Prison which, as the State's main committal prison, has a large daily throughput of prisoners, many of whom have long histories of drug abuse which they try to maintain while in custody. Most of the other institutions are relatively drug free.
I am committed to tackling drug abuse in a comprehensive way and to this end I have recently approved a new draft action plan on drug misuse and drug treatment in the prison system of the kind which I mentioned earlier in this reply. The draft action plan builds on the agreed medical policy between my Department and the Eastern Health Board in that it seeks to provide the same access to treatment for prisoners as patients have within the community.
