Since this Estimate was prepared, the Vice-Chairman of the Prisons Board retired on attaining the Civil Service retiring age, and no appointment has been made in his place. At present there is a Chairman and a Vice-Chairman of the Prisons Board, but they are members of the staff of the Department of Justice, and they receive no extra remuneration for the work they are doing as chairman and vice-chairman respectively. I may say that it is our intention to abolish the Prisons Board entirely and to control the prisons directly from the Department of Justice. It is hoped that as a result a saving of about £1,700 per annum will be made. Of that £1,700, we have already succeeded in saving £1,250. It may be possible when the arrangements, following upon the abolition of the Prisons Board, are fully completed to save some further hundreds of pounds. I have nothing further to say on Sub-head A, except to mention that in addition to the sums I have referred to, we have already saved about £1,500 of the all-Ireland costs of the Prisons Board. Deputies will observe that there is a net decrease in the Estimate of £9,382. That would have been a larger decrease if a certain sum, to which I intend to allude later—a proposed capital expenditure of £3,500 for the purchase and enclosure of land—were also subtracted, because of course that is a capital item which did not appear in the accounts last year.
The principal decreases are in Sub-head C—Pay and Allowances of Officers—a decrease of £5,177; on Sub-head D—Victualling—a saving of £2,020; on Sub-head G—Fuel, Light, Water and Cleaning Articles, etc.—a saving of £1,000; on Sub-head I— Escort and Conveyance—a saving of £1,500; on Sub-head O—Maintenance of Criminal Lunatics in District Mental Hospitals—a saving of £1,000. There are minor decreases in other sub-heads, but I do not think it is necessary to enumerate them all. Sub-head B— Travelling and Incidental Expenses— shows a decrease of £50. These expenses are incurred in covering the expenses which are incurred by headquarters officers in travelling on duty, and incidental expenses, which include the purchase of photo chemicals, the payment for advertisements in newspapers, and that sort of thing. Sub-head C shows a decrease of £5,177. There has been a steady decrease in the cost of pay and allowances of prison officers since the prison service was taken over from the British Government. The total number of officers actually serving in the civil prisons in the Twenty-Six Counties on the 1st April, 1922, was 455, and their actual cost for the year 1922-3 amounted to £89,833. By the 1st April, of this year, the number had been reduced to 352, a reduction of 103, and the estimated cost this year is £70,523, being a reduction of nearly £20,000 on the 1922-3 figure. This reduction was rendered possible by the closing of Kilkenny Prison and of Sunday's Well Female Prison in Cork, and by the reduction of Dundalk Prison to the status of a minor prison, that is to say, a prison that only takes prisoners on remand and prisoners who are sentenced to periods of not more than seven days' imprisonment. It was further effected by the suppression of certain posts in the remaining prisons. The decision as to Dundalk made it possible to reduce the number of governors by one, and to dispense with the services of a number of warders. The prison staff in Dundalk is now only one chief warder and two warders.
Sub-head D is the cost of victualling. It shows a decrease of £2,020. It is estimated that during the current financial year the average daily prison population, including about sixty Borstal boys, will not exceed 800. The average cost of food works out at less than 9d. a day. This, however, does not take into account any overhead charges or the cost of labour. Sub-head E shows a decrease of £1,000. As regards clothing it may be mentioned that all the prison clothing is made by prison labour, and that the sum of £2,000 included in this Estimate is merely the cost of materials. There is also an item for beds and bedding. That has been occasioned by the fact that we have this year completely swept away plank beds in all our prisons. For the future, the plank bed will be non-existent, and prisoners will have ordinary comfortable beds. Sub-head G—Fuel, Light, Water, etc.— shows a decrease of £1,000. The figures are made up as follows: Fuel, £5,000; gas and electric light, £2,500; and water, £950. Sub-head H provides for the payment of head rents due in respect of certain of the prisons. There is a head rent of £139 2s. payable out of the Clonmel Borstal Institution, which is held under a lease for ever. There is a head rent of £51 13s. 10d. payable out of Sligo Prison. There is a payment of £60 per annum in respect of what was Cork Female Prison. As I mentioned, that has been closed, and the prison is now used for wireless broadcasting. There is also a head rent of £70 14s. 6d. out of Kilmainham.
Sub-head I—Escort and Conveyances —is down by £1,250, while ordinary repairs are down by £500. I might mention Sub-head O, dealing with the maintenance of criminal lunatics in district mental hospitals. There are about 170 criminal lunatics maintained at the expense of the Prisons Board in district mental hospitals. I mention that fact because it was stated from the benches opposite some time ago, in the form of a question, that it was the practice of the authority responsible to release or discharge those prisoners who showed signs of insanity so that they might become a charge on local taxation. I wish to say that that suggestion—because it was only a suggestion in the form of a question—was unfounded, and that there are 170 prisoners now detained in these hospitals. Of course Deputies are aware that when a man who commits a crime is found guilty but insane, or if he is not fit to plead, the sentence is that he is detained during pleasure, and the place of detention, if it is a very bad case, is the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dundrum, or, if it is not a homicidal case, the prisoner is usually sent to and paid for in the local mental home.
There is just one other item which I would like to say something about— that is, the purchase and enclosure of land. It is my desire—a desire very strongly felt on my part—that more land should be added to Portlaoighise Prison. There is a certain amount of land there at present, but it is not sufficient to enable all the able-bodied prisoners of good character to work upon land. In dealing with prisoners the main object is to endeavour to reform them, to endeavour to bring home to them that though a man may have fallen he can rise again; that though he may be down he need not be down for all time. My own personal belief is that the best way of reforming and regenerating the man is by keeping him working upon the land, keeping him out of doors, in healthy surroundings, engaged on some particular form of work which occupies his attention and which may interest him. In the terrible old days the idea for prisoners laid down by a Committee of the House of Lords was that they should have hard labour, hard fare, and hard beds. That was a very wrong method, in our idea, and is the very worst method of dealing with prisoners. Our idea is to try to save these prisoners, to do everything we can, so that when they go out again into the world they will be able to have something like a fresh start. I am quite aware that something of this nature was tried before, but it was tried in different surroundings. As possibly Deputies may know, a penal colony was started in Lusk, Co. Dublin, in 1853, and carried on until 1886, when it was closed down, after very great expense, not having done the work of reforming the prisoners which it was hoped by those who established it it would have done. Though Lusk was in a way an experiment on agricultural land, yet we can learn by the failure of Lusk. We can see where Lusk failed and we can profit by it. It is my hope—a very strongly felt hope—that we can do a great deal by acquiring this extra land towards reforming men who are now inmates of our prisons. We have had some difficulty in acquiring the land, for the simple reason that extremely high prices have been asked. It very often happens when the Government is known to be a purchaser, and a willing purchaser, that people ask very extravagant prices. Of course we have compulsory powers by which we could acquire this land at a fair price, and possibly, if necessary, we will invoke these powers.
