Voting ends on prisons overtime deal

Voting by prison officers on an overtime deal is to end 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.

A spokesman for the Prison Offices Association (POA) said the national executive would meet in Dublin tomorrow to receive the result and will communicate it to members in prisons around the country.

The result is expected to be made public at lunchtime tomorrow.

The union recommended the deal for acceptance last month after Justice Minister McDowell warned prison officers 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.

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 amendments 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 clarification 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 POA, years of negotiations and the involvement of the Labour Relations Commission.

He has said that if the answer is negative, 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.

The minister 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.