Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 18 Nov 2003

Vol. 574 No. 4

Adjournment Debate. EU Presidency. - Irish Prison Service.

Mr. Wall

I thank the Minister for staying to answer this Adjournment Debate. As the Curragh Prison is in my constituency and I see it almost every day I pass through the Curragh, it was natural for people to come to me regarding their concerns at the closure which the Minister recently proposed.

The representations come from three different sources. Prison officers are deeply concerned about what will happen their position, where they will be transferred, the criteria to be used, the timescale and so on. Almost all of them have families and they see problems arising because they have mortgages and have made a commitment to the Curragh and to the prison, all of which could change within a few weeks.

The educational staff attached to Kildare VEC are also concerned. There are five full-time staff members, two temporary full-time and eight part-time. They have made a great effort to ensure their work has therapeutic and educational benefits for the prison inmates. This has been successful in that 91% of the inmates are involved in educational and therapeutic classes.

Last but not least are those who have relatives in the prison. It is always sad to see someone at a hospital or a prison but there is perhaps nothing more sad than to see people waiting to visit prison. One can fully understand their concerns as to what will happen. They derive comfort from the enclosed nature of the Curragh Prison because their family members are receiving educational and therapeutic benefits, but they wonder what will happen when their relatives are moved to a different prison, including the level or privacy and protection they can expect. That is my major concern.

Last Thursday, the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment told the House that the prison may not close. I understood her to say the Minister's stance is a negotiating position in the context of the ongoing union-management problem of excessive overtime. If that is the case I ask the Minister to give a clear undertaking tonight that the problem encountered by the prison staff, the educational staff, the inmates and their families is not being used as a ploy or a pawn in the game of trying to resolve this problem. If it is to be used in that way it will be a sad state of affairs. I doubt that was the Minister's intention in his proposal to close the prison. I hope in his reply he will address my concerns about what will happen if the present prison inmates are integrated in the midlands or Portlaoise, or wherever, and what will happen to the educational staff whose contract is with the Kildare VEC.

The prison officers are deeply concerned because they have made a commitment to the Curragh Prison and their families are attached to the neighbourhood or the catchment area of the prison. They have developed social and family links there as well as commitments to building houses and paying mortgages and so on. I hope that in giving his response the Minister will offer some way of alleviating those concerns.

Mr. McDowell

As I said in the course of an Adjournment Debate on Fort Mitchel last week, I have no desire to close or mothball any prison and that includes the Curragh Prison. My preference is for an agreed way forward which is beneficial to both management and staff. The proposal put forward by management not only included a fully operational prison service at Fort Mitchel, the Curragh, Loughan House and Shelton Abbey, but also a prison service-run centralised escort corps.

The management proposal presented an opportunity for staff to move from a culture of working as many hours as possible to a system whereby the emphasis would be on working less and working smart for guaranteed and consistent levels of income which, by any standard in the public sector, would still be extremely attractive. Under the management proposal, a typical basic grade prison officer with ten years service would earn approximately €54,000 per annum from 2004 onwards, and an officer in this rank with 13 years service would be on the maximum of the scale, earning in excess of €61,000 per annum from 2004 onwards. That is the management's proposal. Many officers in the Curragh Prison are in the latter position. I exclude from this the lump sum offered to officers of €12,250 spread over the next three years because this is a non-returning item. This is what is on the table in the context of keeping the Curragh Prison open. That message should be clearly understood.

There is still a window of opportunity for the Prison Officers' Association to come back to the negotiating table and adopt a more realistic approach to the discussions with a view to reaching a mutually acceptable solution. However, time is fast running out and if the Prison Officers' Association is unwilling to agree reasonable terms for the operation of prisons on an economically sustainable basis before 1 January 2004, I have no option, in view of the Estimates published yesterday, but to proceed with the decisions approved by the Government. The responsibility for the choice which must be made rests entirely with the Prison Officers' Association. It is now in the association's hands.

Deputies are aware of the context within which the Government decision was made. Negotiations have been ongoing for seven years. The present impasse with the association was reached despite my giving it 90 days in which to come to an agreement, subsequently establishing another process for negotiation involving Bill Attley and Joe McGovern. The intractable nature of the ensuing impasse led me to seek Government approval for the measures I had to take because present arrangements cannot continue.

I understand the Deputy's point about the concerns expressed by the prison staff, the prisoners and their relatives. If the proposals I have put on the table, which I have outlined to the Deputy, were accepted, the Curragh Prison would remain open. However, I have been forced to make this decision following not only the failure of the Prison Officers' Association to engage in reasonable negotiation so far, but its tabling of a demand for a basic pay increase or, as an alliterative, that an extra 1,200 officers be recruited. This year, between €60 million and €64 million will be spent on overtime, depending on what happens in the few remaining weeks to year's end. That is substantially more than the entire Garda overtime budget.

Earlier this evening, Deputy Wall heard the coruscating criticism of me from his side of the House for the resources that are available to the Garda. That €64 million is divided among 3,300 prison officers whereas the approximate figure of €56 million which the Garda is getting is divided among 11,900 gardaí. Between three and four times as much overtime per capita goes to prison officers as to the Garda. In that context I have done everything I can possibly do. I have put on the table a package which, instead of requiring prison officers to work all the hours God gave them to earn absolutely unconscionable amounts of money, reflects a totally different philosophy whereby they earn the salaries I have mentioned to Deputy Wall, very good salaries by international comparison, for as few hours as the Prison Service can possibly be run on. There will be no incentive for prison officers to maximise overtime and every incentive for them to get home to their families and out on to the golf courses or do whatever else they want to do with their spare time.

I fully appreciate the Deputy's concerns and I know why he has raised them in the House today, but there is an air of unreality to all of this. I hope to meet representatives of the POA later this week to get the negotiation process back on the rails again. I ask the association to look at this offer and consider the interests of its members. It is a choice between a struggle with me, which they cannot win because the money is not there, or alternatively a compromise which has been offered to them and grants them very good basic salaries and every incentive to restore to them their own time, allow them back to their families and hobbies, and enjoy a decent lifestyle. The choice is theirs, and if one of those choices is made, the Curragh and Fort Mitchell prisons will be operated as Prison Service institutions into the future. If I am forced by the POA to opt for the other choice, I have no alternative but to implement the Government decision from 1 January.

The Dáil adjourned at 9.10 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 19 November 2003.