Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 16 February 2023
9. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Justice the steps he is taking to action the recommendations arising from the Irish Prison Service attendance management review published in April 2022; the actions that have been completed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7532/23]
View answerI will ask the Minister about the actions of the attendance management review published in April 2022. The issue we keep hearing about is the challenges around staffing levels in the Prison Service and the impact it is having on the service's ability to deliver the core rehabilitative services, such as education and training, etc. We need to see efforts made here. I know there has been funding for an additional 100 staff, but we clearly need to expand on that.
I thank Deputy Kenny for raising this important matter. The Irish Prison Service is committed to providing a safe and secure environment for both staff and people in prison. This includes ensuring sufficient staffing and managing attendance issues. The Prison Service has been recruiting prison officers in the past number of years and has also put in place a range of supports for staff. Good progress has been made with 133 prison officers recruited in 2021 and 128 in 2022. I am pleased to note that 16 recruit prison officers graduated at the end of January 2023.
In addition, a class of eight recruits who commenced training in December 2022 are due to graduate in March and a further class of seven who commenced training at the end of January will graduate in April. It is expected that 250 prison officers will be recruited this year, supported by additional funding of €6.5 million secured for staffing under budget 2023.
I can advise the Deputy that the attendance management review, to which he referred, is an internal audit document developed at the request of the Irish Prison Service to assist the organisation in considering and developing best practices and procedures around attendance management, which is a critical operational dependency. It is not the practice to publish such reports. However, to be of assistance to the Deputy, I have had inquiries made and am advised by the Irish Prison Service that a number of the recommendations made have been progressed, including a key recommendation focused on upgrading the time and attendance clocking and recording system.
Progress on many of the recommendations in the report is underpinned by the implementation of this new system. I have been advised that the Prison Service expects to publish the relevant tender in the coming weeks. Overall, the report provided a positive assurance that there is an effective system of internal controls in place in the Prison Service over attendance management. The service has advised that it is informing relevant policies and strategies.
I appreciate that and I understand it is an internal report. We know a number of recommendations were made and it is key that we know how much progress has been made in implementing them.
Some of them relate to management within the prisons, how things work and certain issues that were raised in the past by whistleblowers, for want of a better word, within the system. They had issues with how the system was working and how the whole process was arranged. Moving forward, we need to ensure that the recommendations of this report are implemented in full so that we do not have any recurrence of that type of situation.
A key issue is the need to ensure that we have adequate trauma support and rehabilitative services for inmates in the Prison Service. We also need to ensure that we have the psychiatric support that is needed. As we know, and I discussed this with the Minister yesterday evening, it is actually more secure psychiatric spaces that we need rather than more prison spaces because we have a lot of people in prison who should not be there at all. One of the key parts of the service where there are recruitment difficulties is in the provision of psychiatric services and that needs to be examined.
The main point the Deputy is making is that prisons are effectively an ecosystem and need to be treated as such. Prisons encompass staff, prisoners and management and we must ensure that both prisoners and staff have the services and the supports they need.
On mental health, I absolutely agree with the Deputy. Indeed, I raised the same issue numerous times when I was in opposition. I was glad to see that Deputy McEntee when she was Minister for Justice used her own experience with mental health and established a high-level mental health task force. That was very much focused on people coming into the criminal justice system who had mental illnesses. Unfortunately, a lot of people with mental illnesses are ending up in the prison system and they need additional support.
The recommendations are being implemented. There is an implementation plan in place. We also had the opening of the new forensic mental health hospital in Portrane which I was glad to attend. State-of-the-art services are being provided out there, which is wonderful to see. I agree with Deputy Kenny that people who have mental illnesses need to be treated in such facilities and not in prisons.
We are all on the same page in respect of that. The issue raised with me is that the Prison Service is finding it very difficult to recruit and retain specialist psychiatric nurses, psychologists and other mental health professionals. The pension entitlements for everyone working in the Prison Service used to be calculated on a 30-year basis. Staff were entitled to their pension after 30 years which attracted people into the service because in most other public sector areas, they would have to wait until they had 40 years' service. That was changed during the economic crisis but it should be re-examined now. It would make the Prison Service a more attractive place to work for people with certain specialist skills. A prison is a very intense place to work and it can be difficult to deal with people who are in prison because they have committed some crime but who are really there because of the failure of other services in their past or in their early lives. Such failures led to them ending up in prison, in a traumatic situation, and they need to have their mental health issues dealt with appropriately.
I absolutely agree. There has not always been a recognition of that in the past but now there is an understanding that people need those kinds of supports. Often people end up in prison because of a lack of support services when they were younger. When I visited Cork Prison the high number of inmates with undiagnosed dyslexia was really notable. That led to people leaving school at an early age, getting involved in other activities and, unfortunately, committing crimes. Identifying those kinds of issues right across the prison system is hugely important.
I have visited almost every prison at this stage, with only a small number yet to visit. Such visits are very informative. It is very useful to meet the prison staff but also to meet the prisoners and the support staff out in the community. Fantastic work is done at Loughan House, for example, which I was delighted to visit it. Deputy Kenny and I are on the same page on these issues. There has been under-investment in the past and a lack of recognition of the need for these supports. However, that recognition is there now and I assure the Deputy that the I and my ministerial colleagues and our officials are very much focused on it.
