asked the Minister for Justice the facilities that are available in this country's prisons for the rehabilitation and education of prisoners; and if he has any proposals for the extension of such facilities.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Prisoners' Rehabilitation and Education.
31.
Prison officers, welfare officers, instructors, teachers, chaplains, psychologists, medical officers and consultant psychiatrists all play their part in providing rehabilative and educational help. Details are given in the Annual Report on Prisons which are published and available in the Library.
Does the Minister consider that there is sufficient emphasis on the question of the rehabilitation of prisoners in prisons throughout the country?
I should be very unwise to say that I think enough is being done. This is an area where much more can and should be done and my ambition is to try to do as much as I can.
Could the Minister give any indication as to what he feels could or should be done to improve the situation?
There is wonderful scope for any Minister for Justice to do a good deal but the Deputy will understand that before I can embark on, say, the extension of educational facilities I must provide classrooms, buildings and many other things that are necessary. Much the same could be fairly said of anything I might like to do in this area. It could not happen that since 5 July I would simply press the button and get things moving.
Apparently the button has been pressed and nothing has happened so far. Are there any concrete schemes to provide the facilities mentioned?
I might say that the button was jammed up to 5 July; it is now released and working.
But nothing happened.
Yes. The Deputy appears to forget the answers I gave to some other question—50 welfare officers. Has he forgotten that?
Does the Minister agree that there is a fair amount of lip service to the whole matter of rehabilitation of prisoners and will he not look at some of the types of activities in which some of the inmates of these institutions are involved and which could not be said to tend in any way towards rehabilitation? I am thinking in terms of chopping wood and that sort of thing.
I accept that— matchmaking, mailbag making. That is another area that is questionable.
Will the Minister phase these out?
I am trying to get something with which I can replace the types of work the Deputy mentioned.
At present there is no comprehensive national policy for education in prisons and places of penal service and is the Minister trying to do his best in that regard? I do not necessarily blame him for all these evils but is he considering that?
The Deputy will probably be aware that reasonable progress has been made in regard to providing extra educational facilities for inmates. We are becoming fairly sophisticated in the use of television and cassettes and things like that. One of the greatest problems we have is in providing staff, teachers to do the work they are trained to do. If I could overcome that difficulty, which is a fairly serious one, we could have a pretty clear run at doing other things. For the Deputy's information—I know he is interested—I might add that we are commencing the building of a purpose-built unit for education and work training in Arbour Hill. That is to go ahead practically right away.
Staffing does seem to be a problem and this is ironic when so many people are unemployed.
Supplementary questions should be addressed through the Chair.
When do you expect a resolution of the staffing problem?
I hope it will be achieved as quickly as possible. In the absence of a solution to that problem—the Deputy may not be aware of it—we have correspondence courses which are going ahead. I know that many would-be students cannot avail of them: perhaps that system would be too advanced for many of the people we are talking about. Perhaps it is more important for them to be able to read and write, particularly to be able to write their own names.
Thank you.