Vol. 610 No. 5
53 Ms Lynch asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the reason it was necessary to purchase such a large site at Thornton Hall; his plans to develop the site further; if it is envisaged that other services will be provided at Thornton Hall; if not, if the excess land will be sold; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35719/05]
The size of the site purchased will provide for and enable the development to be carried out in a manner which is consistent with best practice from a planning perspective. It will also facilitate the provision of an integrated prison complex with ample recreational and therapeutic facilities. In addition, in line with a recent Government decision a site will be made available for the replacement of the Central Mental Hospital but this is ultimately a matter for the Minister for Health and Children. There are no plans to dispose of any portion of the site or to provide for facilities other than those which have already been indicated.
Mountjoy Prison needs to be replaced. Conditions in Mountjoy have been severely criticised by the Council of Europe committee on the prevention of torture and other inhumane or degrading treatment. They have also been roundly condemned by the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention. Redeveloping the existing 20 acre site at Mountjoy is neither financially viable at an estimated cost of over €400 million nor practical from an operational or developmental perspective. Even if this investment was made the site would remain constrained with no scope for football fields, a running track or other rehabilitative facilities.
Building a new prison campus on a new site will open up new opportunities. The development of a greenfield site means we will have the room to develop progressive rehabilitative facilities and introduce single person cells with in-cell sanitation to end the inhumane practice of slopping out. The size of the Thornton site at 150 acres allows considerable flexibility for a campus style development with modern work practices, as well as allowing the Irish Prison Service to plan for the future taking into account the projected rise in our population. The Irish Prison Service estimates that annual savings on the costs implied by the present manning levels at Mountjoy Prison in the order of €30,000 per prisoner per annum can be generated on a new greenfield site.
I ask the Minister again why he needs 150 acres at the exorbitant price of €30 million, which is six, seven or even eight times the cost of land that is not zoned. If the land is not developed it will have to be sold on those terms. Will it be possible to build on the land, considering Fingal County Council is declaring a conservation area? The council is involved in a survey of archaeological and historical sites in the area. Will the Minister comment on that? The Grangegorman site has 65 acres, 35 being playing fields and 30 suitable for buildings. It envisages a student population of 20,000 to 30,000 with less than half the acreage of Thornton Hall. The site certainly seems large and it does not seem much of it can be built on.
The Deputy has exceeded one minute — he has taken nearly two.
One minute is allowed for a supplementary but I have not yet asked a supplementary.
I point out to the Deputy he has exceeded one minute.
Who will make the decision on the Central Mental Hospital? Has the Minister taken professional advice on siting a prison and a hospital on the same campus?
On the last point, they would not be on the same campus, they would be on adjacent campuses. On the acquisition cost, the land in question was the cheapest land per acre suitable for the construction of a prison which was offered to the committee.
That is not true.
It is true.
It is not true.
Order, please. The Minister is in possession.
It is true. I have examined the records and it was the cheapest land per acre for land which was suitable for the construction of a prison.
Some was ruled in and some was ruled out.
The Deputy would be asking me different questions if I bought unsuitable land.
It was a bit of a fox trot.
There is no fox trot, it is just common sense.
One time you stepped in and the other time you stepped out.
I want to put on the record that in July last Deputy O'Keeffe announced that five acres, which was part of the farm at Thornton Hall that was kept back by the owner because it had planning permission potential, had a value of €1 million per acre. However, later in this House, his party, not himself, said the remaining 150 acres had a total value of €6 million. It is an interesting proposition that five acres was worth €1 million while 150 acres was worth €6 million. I do not accept these figures.
Deputy Costello implied that the project is not going ahead but I want to make it clear that it is going ahead. The land is suitable for the construction of a prison which will be built. It is political play-acting on the part of Deputy Costello who tried to send in Dublin City Council to prevent Mountjoy being redeveloped on historical grounds and some of his allies are now sending in Fingal County Council officials to try to preserve the land because of its historical and archaeological significance. A full survey is being carried out by the State on the land in question. All the requisite expertise will be deployed and the prison will be built on the site.
There are two issues on the value. Clearly the Minister has no clue about land values. Anyone who does not realise that five acres which is zoned for building has enormous value as opposed to agricultural land that is unzoned realises nothing. Incidentally, the five acres was originally supposed to be included and at the last minute it was excluded. This farm was the dearest farm in Europe. The Minister would not allow the Comptroller and Adjutant General to examine the situation before the sale was completed and I can see why.
Given that the Minister has now completed the deal and thrown away the taxpayers' money, is there not considerable evidence that this site is very unsuitable? Access is terribly bad and the roads are not suitable for the traffic at the moment. The public services are not in place, which it will cost a fortune to install. The Minister said to me at one stage that he would not listen to any old guff about fairy forts. If he had any sense of culture or history, would he not accept that there is a wealth of history and archaeology in the area? What timeframe is he proposing and what is the cost estimate for the structure he intends to build on the site?
Deputy O'Keeffe valued the five acres at €1 million per acre.
I did not value it, a local valuer did it for me.
That is fair enough. The Deputy accepted this figure and put it into the public domain. I paid less than one fifth of that per acre for the remaining 150 acres.
How suitable is it?
The land in question is totally suitable for the purpose for which it was bought. It was examined carefully by a team of engineers. The report is available under FOI to anyone who wants to see it. The Deputy can examine it at any time if he wishes. He knows it was examined fully at the time of purchase. As an environmental impact procedure will be put in place, the Deputy need not worry about these matters.
It is a done deal.
Yes, and the Deputy should know that it is suitable land. Road access to the land is not inadequate as has been suggested. I wonder has the Deputy driven up the long straight road, because he would be impressed by the road access to the land. It is not as inadequate as the Deputy is implying.
On the construction of the prison campus, this will be done on a public private partnership basis. The Department of Finance's public private partnership experts and the treasury management agency's experts concurred that the first thing to do for a PPP for a prison is to acquire the site, which has been done. I cannot now put a cost estimate on the entire deal. In the nature of PPP tendering, it would be foolish of me to commit to that.
Give me a ballpark figure.
I believe it will run to €200 million or €300 million, depending on how extensive a prison facility is constructed. It will be between two and six years before it is completed fully. On the Mountjoy site, it is my intention to dispose of it. Given a proper planning scheme, it will recover for taxpayers well in excess of €100 million.
Do not rush it. Do not throw away taxpayers' money again.
I have the facts and figures which indicate there were much cheaper sites. The services are now estimated to cost €40 million, even though there was a previous low estimate of €8 million. What has caused the increase? Will the Minister give an assurance that he will allow Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council to survey the sites at Thornton Hall and Mountjoy to see if there are conservation issues relating to architecture, heritage and history? We do not want him to be a total iconoclast and knock everything down. It is one thing to propose a new prison but it is another issue to demolish part of the heritage of this country.
Unlike Deputy Costello, I believe that Mountjoy Prison should be demolished. There are a couple of features which can be retained as part of redevelopment of the site, including the execution shed which it is proposed to remove to Kilmainham.
Will the Minister allow Dublin City Council to examine the site?
The work will go ahead and the campaign of obstruction against it will not succeed. I am amused by the neighbouring landowners who suddenly say that the fields I bought are of huge architectural significance. Who was there when they built their houses? No one has explained what is under their houses. Just because I buy land it becomes of architectural significance, while they have built a palazzi around it without carrying out any archaeological investigations.
That is no way to talk about Senator O'Toole in his absence.
54 Mr. Sherlock asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if his attention has been drawn to the fact that a judge (details supplied) dismissed 13 cases of alleged drink driving on 9 November 2005 due to the fact that the State, including the gardaí, had refused to provide technical and operating data on the intoxilyser; if the issue will be addressed in order that other suspected drink driving cases are not dismissed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35713/05]
I am informed by the Garda authorities that 13 prosecutions under section 49(4) of the Road Traffic Act 1961, as amended, were dismissed by the district judge sitting at Belmullet District Court on 9 November 2005. An application has been made, by way of case stated, to review the decisions of the district judge.
As the Deputy will appreciate, the courts are subject only to the Constitution and the law, and are independent in the exercise of their functions. These are matters entirely for the presiding judge and in the circumstances the House will understand that I am constrained from commenting on the conduct of a particular case. Without in any way commenting on the particular cases, where I have indicated a judicial review is pending, the House will be aware that it has been the practice for legislation relating to drink driving to be consistently challenged, often unsuccessfully, in the courts. The Government is committed to dealing effectively with the problem of drink driving and will continue to take whatever steps are necessary in this regard.
The Department of Transport and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform have been considering for some time an amendment of the Road Traffic Acts to provide that in some cases persons who are found to be over the limit will be the subject of a non-court procedure in which a prosecution will not be taken if they pay a fixed penalty, surrender their licence for endorsement and consent to an administrative disqualification. If the Department of Transport, which is responsible for policy in this area, proceeds with the proposal, the Garda Commissioner is of the view that very considerable savings in court time and Garda time will result.
Does the Minister agree that drink-driving is a scourge of this country? Last weekend there were ten fatalities on the roads. Does he agree the operation of the intoxilyser has been a comedy of errors since it was introduced? There have been thousands, if not tens of thousands, of drink-driving charges that have had to be thrown out of the courts because there was no paper trail, something about which we know from electronic voting. In the case of drink-driving, the problem is the agencies of the State, including the gardaí, would not provide the relevant technical data so they could be examined. Arising from that the judge decided to dismiss 13 cases. The State should be obliged to make available relevant material that a judge deems appropriate in her court. It did not do that.
I am not asking about something that may be introduced some time in the future but about what we have now and why the gardaí, for whom the Minister is responsible, did not carry out their duty properly. Has the Minister examined this? How will he address it in future so we do not have a situation where people can constantly challenge cases while the gardaí do not fulfil their role?
The courts are independent under the Constitution and carry out their functions independently.
That is irrelevant.
I will not comment on a decision that is to be the subject of an appellate process. The decision on whether to provide information requested is primarily for the person having carriage of the prosecution, the Director of Public Prosecutions. He is the person in charge of a prosecution and it falls to him to decide what information is supplied or what facilities for examination should be granted to the defence in any case. I do not issue directives to the Garda Síochána as to how it should conduct cases or the examinations it should carry out in response to solicitors' requests. That is a matter for the DPP, who is independent. It is not my responsibility.
As far as I know, the intoxilyser equipment works perfectly well and if people want to test it, the extent to which they are free to do so is a matter to be determined in the context of a criminal prosecution between the solicitors acting for the accused and the Director of Public Prosecutions. I am sure the gardaí will abide by any directions they get from the Director of Public Prosecutions as to whether the machine should be examined, dismantled or made available to others. It is a matter for the DPP and for the courts, including the judge in a case and any appellate court, to decide if that is a legitimate request to make and the extent to which the State is obliged to provide facilities for the second guessing of the machine and its technical examination and testing by independent witnesses.
Is the Minister saying the reason the gardaí refused to provide the technical and operational data on the intoxilyser that were requested was that the Director of Public Prosecutions was consulted and said they should not be provided? Is he saying someone else told the gardaí not to provide the data or did they decide not to provide them themselves? Where does the buck stop? The Minister says he has no role in this but at a minimum he could find out what exactly happened and who was responsible for the decision that resulted in the judge throwing out 13 cases which, no doubt, will result in all other cases coming along being put on the back burner until the matter is dealt with by a higher court.
Once again the intoxilyser has been brought into ill repute, even though it is fine equipment, because the procedures under which it has been operated leave much to be desired. If the State is not prepared to play its part, there is not much sense in the Joint Committee on Transport meeting to decide if it is a constitutional matter to have random breath testing. We cannot get prosecutions from the intoxilyser without full co-operation from the people who operate it.
I appreciate the Minister does not want to interfere in individual cases but an important point arises here. Were the cases in question dismissed without prejudice? Is this the end of the matter or are they going to the High Court?
Does the Minister agree that in the main it would not be interfering with court proceedings for this House and the Minister to send a message that any reasonable requests from judges in the hearing of cases should be acceded to as far as possible?
This is the point that must be decided by the courts and not by me. It is not appropriate for me to express opinions on the merits of an outcome.
What if a request was reasonable?
If it is reasonable, a set of implications follows but if it is not correctly legally based, other inferences must be drawn. I am not in a position to speculate on what a court will decide on these issues and it would not help if I did so.
Why did the gardaí refuse?
In a process of discovery in a criminal prosecution decisions are primarily for the prosecutor because we have an adversarial legal system. The prosecutor decides if, as part of bringing the case, he will make available certain information. It is not the function of the Minister to send directives to the gardaí as to what they should do in particular cases.
So the DPP instructed the gardaí.
The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform would be wholly unaware of the state of litigation in any particular case and would have no reason to become involved. These are matters left by the Constitution for others to decide.
Did the DPP make the decision?
I am not aware who made the decision.
Did the Minister not check? A question was asked in this House.
It is certainly not, however, a decision made in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
55 Mr. Howlin asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if the proposed development of the new prison at Thornton Hall has passed the preliminary PPP appraisal stage; if it has been approved by the NDFA as suitable for public private procurement; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35717/05]
The Government has approved in principle the development of a new prison complex on the Thornton site on a value for money PPP basis. The Irish Prison Service is preparing a detailed assessment of the project in accordance with the Department of Finance guidelines for the provision of capital projects through public private partnerships which will result in a detailed business case being provided. The National Development Finance Agency is advising the prison service on these matters.
The PPP procurement method allows full access to the expertise of the private sector in the development and management of major capital projects and allows for the transfer of risk from the Exchequer to the private sector. The National Economic and Social Council has concluded that PPPs have the potential to play a pivotal role in supporting the accelerated delivery of strategic national infrastructure, to yield long-term value for money for the Exchequer and to ensure quality public services.
Initial discussions with the Department of Finance and the National Development Finance Agency indicated that this project was suitable for a PPP procurement approach on the basis of a design, build and maintain basis. It was also established that it would not be feasible to have a proper competitive process unless a suitable site was acquired in advance.
The PPP has a value for money test built into the process. This exercise evaluates the preferred tenders against the public sector benchmark, PSB, to ensure the selected tenders deliver value for money for the Exchequer over the duration of the contract. It is envisaged the new prison at Thornton will be delivered on a design, build, finance and maintain basis over a 25 year period.
The PSB consists of a comprehensive, detailed risk adjusted costing of the project elements using conventional State procurement methods. The drawing up of the public sector benchmark and associated detailed business case is a complicated process.
A business case and public sector benchmark will be completed for the proposed new prison development. This will cost the project both as a PPP project and as a normal Exchequer finance project. It is anticipated this will be completed in February 2006. This will be the subject of discussions with the technical consultants on the substantive project. These consultants will be appointed shortly. The National Development Finance Agency is advising the Irish Prison Service on this process and the Department of Finance will evaluate this process, ensuring the most economically advantageous option to the State is selected.
I thank the Minister for his reply. It contains a great deal of information, which I look forward to reading in detail. This is a stand-alone project and it qualifies as a PPP in regard to its appraisal. The Minister stated the design, build and maintenance of the project would be undertaken by a private company. Does he propose that such a company will also run the campus? Does he propose to privatise the escort service and so on? Will consultants be hired and, if so, will the contract be put out to tender? The Minister stated the building will cost a minimum of €200 million to build but it will probably be double that if consideration is being given to the combined institutions. Is the proposed site of the Central Mental Hospital factored into the cost of the project or will the site only house a prison? Will the Minister or the Prison Service outline their plans in this regard to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights?
With regard to the process envisaged, consultants will be appointed because that is justifiable in these circumstances. I visited the Midlands Prison last Monday. The new buildings were constructed there on a quasi-PPP basis in good time and to a high quality. It compares favourably with the construction of prison buildings in the past, which caused substantial problems.
Is there a danger they will become Ceaucescu-like buildings?
No. This is a design, build and maintenance project and, therefore, the prisons will not be operated privately, similar to those in America and the UK. I intend to keep the operation of prisons within the public sector as long as that is economically feasible.
The Minister is almost a socialist.
"Almost" makes me a socialist but not quite. With regard to transport, it is not my intention, unless I am forced to do so in the future, to outsource escort services. On Monday I was informed that the new cellular transport vans are in operation and they are proving a success. They are operated by Prison Service staff.
The Minister stated the capital cost of the project would be between €200 million and €300 million. Did he come up with this figure off the top of his head or has he received expert advice? Perhaps he received more advice than when he purchased the site.
What is €100 million after all?
How much will the associated project, the relocation of the Central Mental Hospital to the same campus, cost? The Minister is giving himself a significant timeframe of between two and six years to complete the project. Can he give a more accurate timeframe?
I do not want to give misleading information and, therefore, I stated the cost would be between €200 million and €300 million because if I stated hundreds of millions, the figure would be leapt on and we would be at €1 billion before we finished.
That is correct.
However, the private sector tenderers for a PPP must submit competitive tenders and I will not, therefore, outline the cost. Even if I could offer an educated guess, it would not be helpful.
It is not, therefore, an uneducated guess.
It is not being offered as an educated guess. If the Minister for Health and Children decides to relocate the Central Mental Hospital, land will be available at Thornton Hall for that purpose. A significant capital dividend will accrue to the State because the lands at Dundrum have a colossal redevelopment value. The premises on the site are wholly unsuitable for the purpose for which they are used.
Written answers follow Adjournment Debate.
