PAC to examine accounts for Prison Service

Committee Chairman Seán Fleming said: “Tomorrow we will discuss the 2015 appropriation accounts for the prison service and the Comptroller and Auditor General’s Special Report 93: Annualised Hours in the Prison Service. The total gross voted expenditure was €331 million, with payroll costs accounting for 71% of that figure.  Capital expenditure amounted to €29 million.

The Committee will be particularly keen to examine the impact of the annualised hours system on the total hours required to operate the prison service, on overall costs and on individual prison officer's pay, the impact on levels of sick leave as well as the Prison Service's ratio of prison officers to prisoners relative to other states.

The annualised hours system as currently operated does not allow flexibility in redistributing hours between locations and we would like to discuss the Prison Service’s proposals to address this situation. It is disappointing that the reduction in sick leave anticipated with the introduction of the annualised hours system has not materialised and we will be interested in establishing the reasons for this and examining any proposals to identify the underlying causes and reduce the current levels.

We would also like to ascertain the level of contact the Prison service has with prison administrations in other jurisdictions, with a view to examining best practice in a number of areas such as improved work practices but also on issues such as prisoner welfare, improved regimes policies for prisoners, improvements in security measures and utilisation of new and improved technologies.”

This meeting will take place in Committee room 3 at 9am on Thursday, 2 February 2017. Committee proceedings can be viewed live here.

Committee proceedings can also be viewed on the move, through the Houses of the Oireachtas Smartphone App, available for Apple and Android devices.