Prison overcrowding ‘to ease’ after wing opens

THE Government believes the prison overcrowding problem will begin to ease in the coming days as new spaces come on stream.

A new remand block in Castlerea Prison will be able to accommodate 100 inmates.

Announcing the development, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said the new unit in Roscommon would open “this week”.

He said a total of 400 additional prison spaces would be brought on line this year.

However, the planned extension at Wheatfield Prison in Dublin, due to open this summer, has been delayed. Mr Ahern said the block, to accommodate 150 inmates, would now open in mid October.

He said the outfit of the Wheatfield unit had started this week and would take four months to complete.

Mr Ahern said the new C block in Portlaoise Prison, housing 150 inmates, should open by the end of July.

He said the 400 spaces would go some way to addressing, in the medium term, the problem of overcrowding.

Figures provided by the Prison Service show there were 3,853 inmates crammed into spaces for 3,642 people on May 22.

These figures are disputed by the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) which says the figures refer to bed capacity, not cell capacity.

Cell capacity is the original design capacity of each cell, specifying how many people it was designed for. Bed capacity refers to the number of beds in each cell.

The POA estimates the total cell design capacity is around 3,200. These figures show overcrowding is at its worst in Cork, Castlerea and Mountjoy.

Prison Service figures say the bed capacity for Castlerea Prison is 228 and that there were 271 inmates there on May 22 last. However, the POA says the design capacity is 150 and that most of the single cells are doubled up.

Mr Ahern said Thornton Hall was supposed to be the long-term solution, as it would have had the capacity to house a maximum of 2,200 inmates.

But negotiations for the super prison collapsed a number of weeks ago.

Mr Ahern told the Dáil Justice Committee he intended to bring initial proposals for a replacement for Thornton Hall to government in the coming weeks.

“I will go back to government in the next few weeks, possibly the next fortnight, with some indication as to how we are proceeding.”

Labour justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte reminded the minister of a commitment several weeks ago that the plans would be with the Government within a fortnight.

When negotiations over Thornton collapsed, Mr Ahern said the cost quoted by the preferred bidder, Leargas Consortium, had gone up by 30%, raising the Government bill by hundreds of millions of euro.

Mr Rabbitte questioned this and said his sources told him the increased price quoted was €30m, of which 85% was due to sourcing money on the international bank markets and 15% due to alterations sought by the Prison Service.