Prison officers in one-hour stoppage

PRISON officers will leave just a skeleton crew to guard all of Ireland’s prisoners today during a nationwide strike.

The officers are engaging in a one-hour action from 2pm-3pm in a protest over new “clocking-in” procedures.

Prison bosses want officers to go through a two-minute security search before they start their working day.

However, those searches would be carried out on the officers’ own time.

The Prison Officers’ Association said that while they welcome increased security measures, it wants the searches to be carried out on prison time.

It said the prison service had made a unilateral decision without agreement that the time recording clocks situated at the main entrances of the prisons be moved to locations behind the proposed new staff search areas.

It is understood today’s action has been timed for 2pm-3pm because that is the time when prisoners will have returned from their dinner and would normally be let out of their cells. Today they will be locked up for the period and the POA admits it is unsure how the prisoners will react.

Brian Purcell, head of the Prison Service, has said the strike threat is in breach of national agreements, saying those agreements provide for independent third-party arbitration to deal with disputes that may arise and that in the meantime staff are to co-operate with the changes while the issue is being dealt with.

The Prison Officers’ Association denies it is in breach of national agreements, suggesting that terms and conditions of employment have always been separate from national deals.

The association’s deputy general secretary Eugene Dennehy said nowhere in Towards 2016 does it say prison officers have to come into work early to be searched.

The association’s national executive committee will meet again next Tuesday to decide their next course of action.