Ciarán Cuffe
Question:65 Mr. Cuffe asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the plans in development to privatise prisons should the current negotiations with the Prison Officers' Association collapse. [23432/03]
Other Questions. - Irish Prison Service.
Eamon Ryan
Question:121 Mr. Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if the privatisation of prisons is not under consideration by the Government in any circumstance. [23439/03]
Brian O'Shea
Question:122 Mr. O'Shea asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform his proposals for privatising all or any part of the prison system; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23358/03]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 65, 121 and 122 together.
As the House will be aware, the Prison Service has, for some time, been in negotiation with the Prison Officers' Association on a new deal to enhance the operational efficiency of our prisons significantly and reduce costs.
The package of measures under negotiation with the Prison Officers' Association does not refer to any proposal for privatised prisons. The present focus of the proposals is to enable publicly managed prisons to deliver an efficient and effective service. The Prison Officers' Association is due to ballot its members on the proposals very shortly.
I must emphasise that the existing cost structure of the Irish Prison Service is unsustainable. In the absence of agreement, the Government will decide urgently on measures which it has recently discussed to significantly reduce costs in the service. I do not believe that it would be helpful or appropriate to outline at this time the measures which will be taken by the Government if agreement cannot be reached with the Prison Officers' Association by the end of the month. However, I very much hope that agreement will be reached very soon, and that the necessary progress will be achieved on the basis of consensus.
It appears that there is a stalking horse out there in the person of Mr. Seán Aylward, the director of the Irish Prison Service, who seems to be making noises regarding privatisation. He is on record as having said that some of the more progressive states in the US have some of the best prisons and that these are private. Does the Minister concur with Mr. Aylward on this and is he in a position to name the progressive states which have the best prison services in existence?
It is important that we know what will be the end-game in respect of this matter. We are aware that negotiations are under way. My party would be the first to agree that, compared to other sectors, the levels of overtime being paid at present are stratospheric. Everyone knows that a way out is needed, and such a way exists without resorting to privatisation. Will the Minister state whether he agrees with the director of the Irish Prison Service in respect of this matter? The latter is making many positive noises about privatisation and appears to be blissfully unaware of the failures of privatisation.
Will the Minister indicate what will be the end-game in terms of the conclusion of the balloting process? Is privatisation one of the options available to the Minister and has he made plans in this regard? We are aware that the State, through the Office of Public Works, has fine plans for investment in prisons and, among other things, has a strong master-plan for the redevelopment of part of the Mountjoy campus. I may be straying slightly from the content of the original question, but I want to know what will be the end-game. What does the Minister have up his sleeve in the event that the negotiations break down?
I am not in the business of playing games of any kind and, therefore, there is no beginning, middle or end-game in respect of this matter. I am deadly serious about what I am doing and game-playing, if it has happened in the past, is going to end now.
As far as I am concerned, the Prison Service must be run economically. In that context, the Deputy referred to the "stratospheric" levels of overtime being paid. Taxpayers are being confronted with a demand that matters should continue as they are at present. The answer to such a demand is an emphatic no. The House has not provided funding which would enable me to allow matters to continue in their current vein and no such funding will be provided by the Government. We have reached the point where existing rates of overtime are not merely unsustainable, they are unpayable. In light of those circumstances, I have placed proposals before the Prison Officers' Association.
I indicated in reply to earlier questions – I do not propose to repeat myself at inordinate length – that privatisation is not an option which would occur to me as an immediate solution to the current position in our prisons. What I want is a Prison Service that will be operated, owned, managed and staffed by the State. That is my priority and it will be achieved if people adopt a realistic approach to the manner in which the finances of the Prison Service are operated. I refuse, point blank, to allow a situation to continue where the capital budgets needed to ensure that our Prison Service will be properly developed and maintained, and will not be a model in which Victorian practices such as slopping out are the norm, are cannibalised to pay stratospheric overtime costs. These budgets must be used to create humane and proper conditions for those we want to rehabilitate and encourage to play a useful role in society.
I am not prepared to allow the status quo to remain in place. Taxpayers expect that change will occur. Since becoming Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, I have clearly signalled that to all interests involved in the Prison Service. I will not be deflected from my goal, nor will I allow the smokescreen of privatisation to be raised by people to create an artificial conflict. What is at issue here is whether the State can operate a prison service with substantial resources in a sensible, rational and fair-minded way. The Government has put forward proposals which would improve not merely the financial management of the Prison Service but also the quality of life of many prison officers.
The sick leave issue, to which Deputy Deasy referred, and the overtime issue are related and it would be naive not to see them as such. I intend that these issues will be confronted, sooner rather than later. I have given every opportunity for the agreement process to run its course. The SORT-STEP process, which was initiated seven years ago, is over in terms of its negotiation phase. We are now at the point of decision. It falls to the Prison Officers' Association, which is balloting its members, to make the immediate decision. I cannot wait much longer before taking unilateral action if we cannot proceed on the basis of agreement.
The Minister referred to a number of serious issues such as prison policy, standards, conditions in prisons, staff numbers and overtime. It seems that the matter of privatisation is not conditional on any of these. However, it is conditional on a particular industrial dispute taking place at present. The prospect of privatisation is being held over prison staff, who are balloting at present, by the Irish Prison Service. The message being put across is that if members of staff do not vote the right way, the service will be privatised. It is improper to get involved in an industrial dispute in this fashion. If there are grounds for privatisation, the Minister should put them before the House in order that they can be debated. He should present a Green Paper or a White Paper and come before us.
The Minister is intervening with the threat of privatisation in respect of a narrow sectoral issue, namely, that of industrialisation, and that is totally wrong. He is not blameless in regard to this matter, particularly in terms of the possible privatisation of escort duties. It is time we considered the future of the prison system in a broader sense. Those involved with the Prison Service, be it the Minister or some other agency, should not be lightly issuing threats of this nature. We should look at prison policy in the wider sense. Will the Minister provide a categorical declaration that this will be the case, rather than it being conditional on what happens in respect of the ballot among prison staff?
I welcome the Minister's statement that he wants the Prison Service – I hope in its entirety – to remain under the control of and to continue to be operated by the State. On 24 September a group of 16 leading experts in the fields of criminology and penology asked the Minister to publicly state his position in this regard, which he has now done. They also asked if he would follow the example of the Government of New Zealand which is introducing legislation to prevent the privatisation of prisons.
Does the Minister agree that one of the major problems with the Prison Service is the tendency to incarcerate too many non-violent prisoners? Does he also agree that dealing with such individuals or short-sentence prisoners in the community would save the Exchequer up to €62 million per year? Does he further agree that if we addressed the problem of those who re-offend and are returned to prison, the Exchequer would make additional savings and, if it ever can be the case, prisons would be made economical? Perhaps some of the effort the Minister is investing in facing down the POA would be better spent in ensuring that our prisons are run to a proper standard and that people do not re-offend and spend more time in jail.
I reiterate to Deputy Costello that there is no question of threatening anybody with privatisation. I have clearly and unequivocally indicated to the House what my preference in this is and I intend to follow my political judgment and stick with my preference. I want to make it equally clear that the public is entitled to have value for money, especially in the context of a State-run service.
Deputy Deasy raised the issue of sick leave. In a prison service that has one of the highest ratios of prison officers to prisoners anywhere in the world, would one imagine there would be one of the lowest overtime requirements. Curiously, we have the worst of both worlds. We have one of the highest ratios of prison officers to prisoners and the highest ratio of prison officer overtime to prisoner officer wages. That is the reality I have to confront.
Deputy Ó Snodaigh asked should we not be trying to avoid prison as a solution. I strongly believe that prison should be the remedy of last resort for the courts in dealing with offenders. I invite anyone in this House who wants to see what the inside of a prison is like to make arrangements through the Prison Service to visit our prisons.
One could spend a week there.
We have our own expert in there. He is on a fact-finding mission.
In fairness to that Deputy, I am not talking about him. Anyone who comes to this House and expostulates on the need for more and more people to go to jail for longer and longer terms should, before they talk, walk the walk – to use Deputy Deasy's phrase – down a few corridors to see what they are talking about. I agree with Deputy Ó Snodaigh that for any offender, particularly young offenders, a sentence of imprisonment is a personal catastrophe and should be avoided if at all possible.
Deputy Ó Snodaigh asked if I would not be better expending my energies on trying to create a prison service that is more rehabilitative rather that dealing with this overtime issue. It is a fair-minded question. The two issues are faces of the same coin. Overtime is cannibalising the capital budget and preventing prison officers from being deployed to rehabilitative training and interaction with prisoners. The huge expense the overtime budget constitutes, and the huge handicap it represents for our Prison Service, is retarding our capacity to modernise, improve and humanise our prison system to the maximum extent. Therefore, it is not a question of focusing on the wrong issue – the two are the same issue. If I cannot deal with the overtime issue and the haemorrhage of expenditure into that waste, I will not be in a position to deal with improving our Prison Service.
I agree with Deputy Ó Snodaigh that as a society we should not be in the mode of some societies which regard prison as a deterrent of first resort. It should be a remedy of last resort in the criminal justice system.
The Deputy asked whether I would be tempted to follow the New Zealand precedent of legislating to prevent the privatisation of prisons. As I understand it, that does not arise in this jurisdiction as it would require legislation for me to hand over the management of Irish prisons to persons other than officers of the State. As a Minister, it would be ultra vires to attempt without statute to privatise the management of our prisons. I hasten to add that this does not extend to peripheral services such as transport. As far as I am concerned, that issue simply does not arise now. What is needed is for people to concentrate on the fundamental issue, namely, giving the taxpayer and society what they are entitled to – some fairness in relation to the costs of the prison system to the economy. I am intent on achieving that.
I accept what the Minister has said. He stated that the possibility of a public private partnership would be considered. In any PPP, something is given by the State in return for receiving a service from the private sector. Is the Minister considering that the lands on which some of our prisons operate would be given to the private sector? What consideration does the Minister have in mind in the instance where he would consider PPPs?
We have two choices if we require new prison buildings. We can do what we attempted in the past and build them through the Office of Public Works. In the case of Wheatfield, that cost an awful lot of money and took an awful lot of time. Alternatively, we can do what any intelligent society would do if it were building a major institution. We could ask someone, on a public private partnership basis, to design, build and possibly maintain the structure of a building they had designed and built. That does not necessarily have implications for the management of the institution thereafter. For instance, it is possible to build a hospital, bridge or stretch of motorway through PPP. It does not mean it falls to the private sector to staff or manage the activities of the institution in question. PPPs are not the thin end of a wedge of privatisation of the function of governing and custodial functions of prisons. I see no logical connection between the two.
If we have to build a new prison – that is a mater on which no conclusions, tentative or otherwise, have been arrived at – I presume nearly everyone in this House, with the possible exception of the current occupant of a certain place in Mountjoy Prison, would back me if I had the project designed, built and possibly maintained by the private sector.
Do not bet on it.
It has been shown in the past that huge waste has taken place when these projects were left to the public sector.
I asked the Minister whether he had proposals for the privatisation of all or any part of the prison system. What about the escort system or any other service in relation to the prison system? Does the Minister have proposals for privatisation or is a body discussing this matter? This has been articulated elsewhere and it is not coming on the wind – it is coming from somebody. From where is it emanating?
I have stated my view of the core element of the Prison Service and there are no such proposals. While I could give the Deputy a jesuitical answer and tell him there are no such proposals in respect of any service as a proposal means someone is actually making a proposal—
That is like the Taoiseach last week.
The Minister is sounding more and more like the Taoiseach.
—I will not do that. I am carefully examining how economies can be made in the peripheral support services which are now carried out inservice, so to speak. I regard it as my duty to do so. I do not believe it would be appropriate for me on some sort of ideological basis to exclude the possibility that major savings could be made in, for example, transporting prisoners between courts and custodial institutions.
In that context, I stress that I am also looking at other possibilities, such as the introduction of video conferencing for remand hearings, video visiting of prisoners and video conferencing between lawyers and their incarcerated clients. A committee established under the chairmanship of Ms Justice Susan Denham is looking at that issue. It is an area where significant economies could be made. In that area, it is possible that the video network service would be installed, designed and operated by a private operator rather than by a State entity.
Written Answers follow Adjournment Debate.