The provision of safe and secure custody and dignity of care to persons in the penal system in Ireland is a priority for me as Minister and for the Irish Prison Service.
The Deputy will appreciate that a wide range of measures were necessary to address the particular risks posed by the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of prisons. The measures adopted by the Prison Service were in keeping with the advice of NPET and the prison-specific guidance of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Some of these measures included cocooning of vulnerable prisoners and isolation of prisoners in circumstances including display of symptoms of the virus. These and other measures adopted on the context of the pandemic can be expected to have had an impact on the out of cell times of some prisoners.
However I am informed by the Irish Prison Service that it does not hold information in the particular format requested by the Deputy and that it is not possible to provide exact figures on the out-of-cell time in each prison, as this may change on a daily basis.
For the Deputy's information, the following table, furnished to me by the Irish Prison Service, sets out indicative out-of-cell times for the general prison population across the prison estate.
Prison
|
Indicative out-of-cell times for the general prison population
|
Arbour Hill
|
8
|
Castlerea
|
5
|
Cloverhill
|
5.4
|
Cork
|
5
|
Limerick
|
8
|
Loughan House
|
Full day out-of-cell time
|
Midlands
|
5.5
|
Mountjoy Male
|
4.5
|
Mountjoy Female
|
5
|
Portlaoise
|
6
|
Shelton Abbey
|
Full day out-of-cell time
|
Wheatfield
|
7
|