I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £2,234,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1991, for expenses in connection with prisons, including centres of detention for juveniles; for probation and welfare services; and for payment of a grant-in aid.
The need for this Supplementary Estimate arises essentially to cover additional expenditure incurred in connection with disturbances in Limerick and Mountjoy Prisons in September this year.
I should like first to give a brief account of what happened. On 10 September eight prisoners climbed onto the roof of Limerick Prison. They were not destructive and all came down peacefully within three days. On 15 September six prisoners climbed onto the roof of Mountjoy Prison. It was decided not to force them from the roof immediately and, in fact, one came down voluntarily before the following morning.
On the afternoon of 16 September, however, a further 66 prisoners managed to climb onto the roof from an exercise yard. The prisoners in the yard had formed a human pyramid by which some of them were able to climb to the top of a retaining wall and from there to the roof.
The prisoners then proceeded to strip the roof and to use the slates as missiles to keep prison staff at bay. Eventually prison staff, backed up by gardaí and an Army fire tender, brought the disturbance under control. Additional staffing was required immediately to deal with these disturbances and also to cope with their aftermath and the general unsettling effect they had throughout the prison system.
Short-term higher staffing levels of this kind are possible only by the recall of prison officers from rest days for overtime duty. The increase shown under the salaries, wages and allowances subhead of the Vote arises from this additional overtime. The higher staffing levels have been gradually reduced since the disturbances and the position should be back to normal very shortly.
The total overtime bill for the prison service in 1991 will be about £14 million. This represents a reduction in real terms since 1986 when the bill was £13.4 million and since then the prisoner population has grown from about 1,870 to about 2,190. A new institution at Wheatfield has been opened which involved an increase in manning and new rosters have been introduced which eliminate dependence on in-built overtime for the staffing of part of the prison day. However, making due allowance for the particular problem which had to be dealt with over the past few months, the continuing underlying high level of overtime is a source of concern.
While a certain level of overtime is unavoidable given the special conditions in which prisons have to operate, strict control must be exercised over overtime working so that overtime may be kept to the absolute minimum. The steps that are being taken to keep the level of overtime in check are currently being reviewed to see what further improvements can be effected.
Absenteeism, which accounts for a disproportionate slice of overtime working, is far too high, even allowing for the special features of work in prisons, and measures to reduce it will, therefore, continue to receive particular attention.
In the original estimate for this year I provided for the recruitment of 196 additional prison officers in order to deal with the growth in the numbers in custody and to effect a reduction in the level of overtime. So far 169 of these staff have been recruited on a phased basis and I expect that their availability will enable the Prison Service to respond to the demands which will fall on it in the coming years while reducing recourse to overtime.
It would be wrong to suggest, however, that all the overtime, or anything approaching it, could be converted into more jobs. Most of the overtime arises to deal with unforeseen requirements. The recent disturbances in Limerick and Mountjoy prisons and their aftermath are a case in point. Another requirement is for escorting prisoners outside the prisons for routine hospital treatment, for transfers within the system and for court hearings. Since requirements vary from day to day the employment of extra staff to meet those requirements would not necessarily be more economical. Other unforeseen requirements — for example, for staff to replace those absent, to supervise contractors working within the prisons and to deal with particular problem areas — also give rise to overtime.
Measures to reduce the level of overtime must be targeted on specific areas where tangible improvements can be achieved without losing the benefit of a level of reasonable flexibility in manning arrangements which overtime gives and which is so necessary to the particular security and other requirements of the operation of prisons.
A considerable amount of damage was caused to the roof of Mountjoy Prison during the disturbance. The cost of immediate repairs was in the region of £500,000. In conjunction with the repairs some security deficiencies had to be remedied and moreover, deficiencies identified in other prisons in the light of the Limerick and Mountjoy experience had also to be made good as a matter of urgency, particularly in view of the unsettling effect throughout the prison system of what happened in Limerick and Mountjoy. It was this expenditure which gave rise to the overrun on subhead D of the Vote — buildings and equipment. Incidentally the Mountjoy disturbance demonstrated the serious security weakness of a modern slated roof. Not only could the prisoners break through it easily, and move freely on it, but the slates themselves when used as missiles were a potent weapon against prison staff, gardaí and Army. It was decided, therefore, to replace the entire roof with metal-deck sheeting. The cost of the new style roof was about 20 per cent higher than direct replacement.
On a general point I cannot accept that the prisoners involved in these disturbances could in any way be justified in what they did. There is no good basis, for examples, for suggesting that it was a legitimate protest against prison conditions. Conditions in Mountjoy and Limerick prisons are not unreasonable given the age of the buildings and the general pressure on prison space. Whatever defects the buildings have will be remedied in time as a planned renovation programme is completed. Since 1987 about £31 million has been spent on the prison building programme, apart from the ultra-modern facility at Wheatfield.
The major portion of this expenditure has been directed towards the general improvement of physical conditions in the prisons. Specific projects undertaken include major electrical works, including the provision of a cellcall system at Mountjoy and Portlaoise; new laundry and workshop facilities and the refurbishment of the kitchen at Cork Prison; and the renovation of the D Wing of St. Patrick's Institution. A particularly noteworthy example of what has been and is being achieved is the renovated D Wing of St. Patrick's Institution which I officially inaugurated recently. Not only have the structures, fittings and fixtures been modernised but a range of new facilities have been installed, including in-cell sanitation.
At present the constructon of a new unit in Mountjoy Prison to cater for offenders with communicable diseases is well underway. The unit, which will provide an additional 57 prison places, is due for completion in June next. Work on the total refurbishment of Mountjoy Women's Prison commenced recently and is due for completion in September 1992. This work, which includes in-cell sanitation, will bring the Women's Prison up to the same high standard as the newly refurbished D Wing of St. Patrick's Institution.
The developments are a clear indication of the Government's commitment to modernising the prison system. I have to say that the money spent on the repairs to Mountjoy as a result of the disturbance would have been better spent on these kinds of improvement — and let us not forget that what we are dealing with here is taxpayers' money. At no stage of the disturbance did the prisoners put forward any complaints of real substance and it is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that the disturbance simply represented a challenge to good order in the prisons and to the institutions of State. Causing large scale destruction in Mountjoy Prison and serious risks to the life and limb of prison staff, gardaí and members of the Army can scarcely be regarded as a manifestation of genuine concern for the improvement of prison conditions.
This Supplementary Estimate also covers minor overruns on expenditure on posts and telecommunications services in the prisons and on the Probation and Welfare Service. There is no special significance to them and they represent a very small percentage of the budget for those services.
There are total savings of £924,000 elsewhere in the Vote to offset the increases to which I have referred.
As Deputies will be aware, the prison system operates side by side with a range of alternatives to custody which are available either at the stage when sentence is being passed in court or when conditional release from prison is being granted. Alternatives include fines and compensation orders, probation, deferred and suspended sentences and community service orders. At present, there at about 3,200 offenders under supervision in the community as an alternative to custody, of whom 750 are on community service orders. The desirability of using prisons only as a last resort, the pressure on prison space and cost considerations make it essential to develop as many alternatives as possible.
One of these is the scheme for intensive supervision of more serious offenders in the community by the Probation and Welfare Service, which I announced last year. The scheme will be applicable both at the stage when offenders are convicted and sentenced in court and on the release of offenders from the prisons. It is aimed at dealing with about 200 serious offenders at any one time in the community rather than in prison. Considerable progress has been made in putting the scheme in place. By the end of this year 18 probation and welfare officers out of a total of 31 will have been recruited to operate the scheme and significant steps will have been taken in developing three new centres, in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, to facilitate the scheme. The provision which was made in the 1991 Estimate for this project has turned out to be more than necessary for immediate requirements for this year and for that reason it is possible to show a saving under subheads G1 and G3 to offset excess expenditure elsewhere on the Vote. Savings will also be achieved in expenditure on manufacturing in the prisons and appropriations-in-aid will be higher than anticipated.
Before I conclude, I should like to make a few general points about the prison system. At any one time there are 2,200 persons in custody. During the course of a year about 7,000 persons pass through the system. Of these about 3,000 are persons who have been remanded in custody by the courts pending trial. The length of time for which these persons remain in custody depends on bail arrangements or the time taken for the case to come to a hearing, but very often it can be as short as a few days. Where convicted persons are concerned the length of time spent in custody depends on the length of sentence, but most sentences are relatively short. Therefore, 2,200 places are generally adequate to meet requirements. A quite mistaken picture would be given if one were to simply divide the total number of persons who pass through the prison system in a year by the number of places and draw conclusions from that about the proportion of their sentence that is being served by sentenced persons.
Temporary release from prisons before completion of sentence is, of course, available under the Criminal Justice Act, 1960, for selected prisoners, depending on the nature of the offence, the length of sentence and taking account of the overriding concern to protect the public. All such releases are conditional on good behaviour and supervision, as necessary. The important point to emphasise is that all offenders who are committed to custody by the courts will be accommodated in the prisons and that no person will be released from custody before the normal expiration of sentence if that would be contrary to the public interest.
The distribution of the prisoner population between different prisons and places of detention and the operational arrangements in place in them is subject to continuous review. The position in Limerick Prison, in particular, has been assessed over recent months and as a consequence the Government have decided to discontinue military protection of the perimeter of the prison. The military presence there commenced in the mid-seventies to deal with the situation obtaining at that time when the prison contained a large number of subversive offenders. The situation has changed over the years and Limerick now holds just one female offender in that category. A military presence is not now considered essential and the Government have, therefore, decided to relieve the Army of the obligation to man the perimeter of the prison. I am satisfied that arrangements can be put in place, using the resources of the prison service backed up by gardaí as required, to maintain an appropriate level of security at the prison. If necessary, a redistribution of high risk prisoners to other prisons will take place should that be required to ensure their safe custody.
Although it is not directly relevant to this Supplementary Estimate I should like to inform the House of a development which is planned for next year. It has to do with the solving of serious deficiencies in the prison system, namely, the easing of overcrowding and the provision of a facility for disruptive prisoners who should be separated from the general body of prisoners. I should explain that experience shows that the vast majority of prisoners simply want to serve out their sentences in peace. In a prison setting, however, it is very easy for troublemakers to play on the ordinary frustrations inherent in prison custody and to provoke discontent. When this builds up the results can be serious disturbances and riots of the kind which occurred recently in Limerick and Mountjoy Prisons.
The way to prevent that happening is to remove from the troublemakers the opportunity to foment disorder. For this reason I have obtained the approval of the Government to take over the military detention barracks in the Curragh for use as a separation prison for troublemakers. The intention is to staff and operate it exclusively by prison staff without any input from the Army. The prison will have accomodation for 47 prisoners and should be ready for occupation some time next year when necessary alterations have been carried out. The availability of this prison as an additional element in the whole prison system will go a long way to ensuring stability in the system and the better use of resources for the benefit of the majority of those in custody. No expenditure will arise on the proposal this year and I will deal in more detail with the proposal when the budgetary provision for 1992 is being debated.
I recommend to the House the adoption of this Supplementary Estimate.