I am advised by the Irish Prison Service that the proposed new prison facilities at Thornton Hall will cater for a greater number of women prisoners than is currently provided for at the Dóchas Centre.
As the Deputy is aware, the Dóchas Centre was designed to accommodate 80 women. However, since the facility was commissioned it regularly accommodates prisoner numbers in excess of its design capacity. Taking this into account, coupled with the need to future-proof the Thornton Hall facilities in capacity terms, the women's prison at Thornton will provide accommodation for 170 women. The design will be based on the concept of single room occupancy, will allow for the separation of sentenced and non-sentenced offenders and will afford a greater opportunity of enhanced regimes, thus allowing for greater flexibility.
There are no plans to move away from the basic architectural design principles of the Dóchas Centre. The design has proved to be a successful (prison) model and the design of the women's prison at Thornton seeks to build on the experience and lessons of the Dóchas model, whilst expanding the regime options and fostering the ethos of Dóchas, i.e. a domestic scale courtyard development consisting of a number of house units of single occupancy en-suite accommodation. Each house will also have domestic style cooking and laundry facilities, etc.
In relation to the proposed new prison development at Kilworth, County Cork, I can confirm that the Irish Prison Service intends to provide accommodation for women prisoners in the new development. Although the project has not reached detailed design stage, the likelihood is that the new facility will have accommodation for about 40 women following a similar model to the Dóchas and Thornton designs. This includes separate accommodation for remand and sentenced prisoners.
