Prison Service

Wednesday, 20 October 2021

Questions (191, 192)

Martin Kenny

Question:

191. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Justice the cost breakdown for each support service currently available to inmates within the Irish Prison Service. [51370/21]

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192. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Justice the number of inmates within the Irish Prison Service who have engaged with support services between 2016 and 2020, in tabular form.; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [51371/21]

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Written answers

Minister of State at the Department of Justice

I propose to take Questions Nos. 191 and 192 together.

I can advise the Deputy that the Irish Prison Service provides a wide range of rehabilitative supports and services to prisoners. These include education, employment, work training, healthcare, psychiatric, psychological, counselling, welfare and chaplaincy services, some of which are intended to provide purposeful activity while in custody and to encourage and equip individuals to lead law-abiding lives on release.

Prisoner services are provided through a blend of different methods of service delivery with some services, such as Psychology, Work and Training; Chaplaincy and Healthcare provided by staff directly employed by the Prison Service. Other services such as Probation Service, Education and Mental Health Services are provided by staff from other statutory organisations.

Services such as drug addiction and resettlement services are provided to the Prison Service by organisations contracted for that purpose.

These services are available to all prisoners in all locations. Due to the varied nature of service delivery the Irish Prison Service does not record centralised data on prisoner who have engaged with one or all of these service providers.

To provide data on the number of inmates who have engaged with these support services between 2016 and 2020, would require a manual examination of a large number of individual prisoner records. Such an examination would require a disproportionate and inordinate amount of staff time and effort, which could not be justified where there are other significant demands on resources.

However I am advised that the Prison Service are currently reviewing all of the information they gather in order to improve data analysis and reporting. This restructuring of data will facilitate more timely and accurate provision of structured data and information requests going forward.

The costs associated with the provision of prisoner servicers are published annually in the annual Appropriate Accounts. The costs for the provision of Prisoner Services and Education Services is set out in the table below. The Prison Services category includes expenditure for Medical Care and for Work Training but also includes expenditure for - Prisoner Catering Service; Prisoner Clothing and Toiletries; Prisoner Bedding, Furniture & TV's; Cleaning & Laundry Services and Gratuities.

Table 1

Total expenditure Prisoner Services and Educational Services for the period 2016 to 2020.

Source: Vote21 IPS	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Appropriation Accounts	€'000	€'000	€'000	€'000	€'000
A.4. Prisoner Services	27,649	27,913	29,973	28,595	34,203
A.6. Educational Services	1,065	1,083	1,227	1,389	1,424