Prison officers to unveil pay deal decision

Prison officers are to publish the result of their ballot on the prison overtime deal today.

The nationwide ballot of the country’s 3,200 prison officers is the second vote on the controversial package, which is designed to reduce the prison overtime bill.

The Prison Officers Association (POA) recommended the deal for acceptance last month after Justice Minister McDowell warned that it was their final window of opportunity.

Although the result of the ballot is known only by the independent auditor appointed to count the votes, it is thought that the deal will be accepted by a slim majority.

The POA national executive will meet in Dublin today to receive the result and will communicate it to its members in prisons around the country before making it public.

Prison officers have been offered essentially the same deal of annualised hours to cut the €60m overtime bill, which they rejected by a 70% majority last April.

But some tweaks have been made so that prison officers are not forced to work overtime.

Justice Minister Michael McDowell initially laid down a 10-day deadline for the POA to decide on the deal last month, but extended it to give the association more time to consider clarifications it had received.

Prison officers have been given assurances that the new prison planned for Cork will not be run by the private sector and that arrangements will be made to facilitate staff who were redeployed after the closure of Spike Island prison in Cork.

Mr McDowell has warned that the deal represents the final window of opportunity for prison officers, after 300 meetings with the Prison Officers Association (POA), years of negotiations and the involvement of the Labour Relations Commission.

He has said that if the answer is ‘no’, he will go ahead with his plan to privatise prison escorts and to hand the running of the country’s remaining open prisons – Loughan House in Co Cavan and Shelton Abbey in Co Wicklow – to an independent agency.

He has also raised the possibility of getting a private company to run the replacement for Mountjoy prison in Thornton in Dublin and the new prison planned for Spike Island in Cork.