Lack of funding is keeping inmates in jail, TD warns

UP to 1,000 offenders who should be doing community service are in prison because the Probation and Welfare service is under resourced, a TD claimed yesterday.

Speaking at the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday Fine Gael’s Paul Connaughton expressed dissatisfaction at the number of inmates who are behind bars because the probation service could not handle their supervision.

“Somehow or other it always seems the poor people, the small people, who do their time in jail,” he said, suggesting that as many as 1,000 people could be unjustly imprisoned.

Department of Justice Secretary General Tim Dalton denied the figure was that large but conceded that judges were inclined to sanction imprisonment for offenders because they could not trust the probation service to be available.

“There is a fairly large proportion of people in Irish prisons who are serving short sentences and obviously a proportion of them could be out of prison,” he said.

Yesterday’s Committee also criticised the Government for knowingly passing legislation, which it knew could not have been implemented due to a lack of resources - a point also made by Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell.

The criticism came after Mr Dalton and chief probation and welfare officer Sean Lowry both admitted that the Probation and Welfare Service had for years been failing to carry out parts of its statutory role.

The service should provide judges at the family courts with reports on civil family law cases - something it has not done since 1995 despite having a statutory duty to do so under the Family Law Act.

“The Probation and Welfare service is not in a position to provide the service envisaged in that legislation, which means that what the Oireachtas intended, until such time as the resource issue is solved, can’t be implemented,” said Mr Lowry.

“Ideally, the service should be geared up to deliver the service which the Oireachtas has set it up for.

“I’m acknowledging that as things stand it is unsatisfactory and we are trying to address it,” said Mr Dalton.

Mr Purcell also criticised the Government, saying he had no doubt the Cabinet was aware of the costs involved before passing the Family Law Act.

“It’s part of a broader difficulty when you have policies which don’t necessarily gel fully,” he said, indicating that a Government cap on public service recruitment was preventing other policies from being completed.

PAC chairman John Perry demanded a report from the Department of Finance, saying he was dismayed at what he was hearing.

“I’m very disappointed the legislation has been brought into the house without the foresight of putting a cost on it. We’re fooling the public and that’s not good enough. It’s not doing anything for democracy at all,” he said.

“It’s a terrible reflection on management and it can’t be ignored,” PAC vice chairman John McGuinness added.