Hike in prison numbers ‘shows need for new jail’

ANOTHER significant increase in Ireland’s jail population highlights the need for a new prison, the head of the Irish Prison Service (IPS) said yesterday.

Brian Purcell was speaking after the release of the IPS’s 2008 annual report which showed a 13.6% rise from 2007 in the total number of committals to prisons last year and, further, a 25% increase in the amount of people committed under sentence.

“That is a significant increase,” Mr Purcell said.

“We have been dealing, over the last 10 years or so, with an ever increasing number of people in custody and that, of course, is a situation which is ongoing.”

The trend highlights the need for the development of a new prison, he said.

Earlier this year, the government was forced to abandon plans to build a 2,200-space super-prison at Thornton Hall, in Co Dublin, to replace Mountjoy prison.

Mr Purcell said a huge amount of preparation work had gone into the Thornton Hall project.

“After a long hard look and detailed evaluation by the prison service, we simply had to come to the decision that project was unaffordable given the substantial increases in financing the project,” he said.

He described the decision as a setback but reiterated the Justice Minister Dermot Ahern’s commitment, announced in June, to proceed on a phased basis.

“A huge amount of work has gone on, on the ground, into getting Thornton Phase II, if I can call it that, under way. And that is going ahead,” he said.

“Even though the decision earlier this year was a setback, and that’s all it was, Thornton will go ahead and will fulfil the need of the IPS in the long-term.”

But he pointed out that 1,400 new prison spaces have come on stream since 1997, and that 120 new spaces have been provided in a new block at Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon.