Prison Service agrees review over financial catering matters

The IPS said it had 'accepted the recommendation' and that a tender for the proposed review was being finalised. File picture

The Irish Prison Service has agreed to an external review of its staff catering system after a consultants’ review identified significant failures of financial governance.

The newly-published report, by the Kosi Corporation consultancy, recommends that a high level review of the prisons’ Voluntary Mess Committees (VMC) be completed within 12 weeks so that “relevant recommendations in this report can be implemented as soon as possible”.

Voluntary mess committees were introduced in the prisons in 2001 as a means of providing catering for staff independent of the prisons service itself.

The IPS said it had “accepted the recommendation” and that a tender for the proposed review was being finalised.

Kosi said the review will confirm or otherwise that the current mess committee system “represents the optimum strategy going forward”. The secretary general of the Department of Justice said the Kosi recommendations “are being followed up as a priority”.

The Kosi review was triggered after the Public Accounts Committee recommended an audit of the standards of account keeping within the Prisons Service in late 2020.

That action stemmed from an examination of the prisons’ catering services in 2019 by the Comptroller and Auditor General, which found a number of “non-standard, high-value food items” — including fillet steaks, rib roasts, prosciutto and catering chocolate — were “repeatedly purchased” in one prison.

The same review found thousands of euro from the now discontinued Prisoners Assistance Programme Funds (which were funded from profits from prison tuck shops) were used to fund payments to the mess committees, and that the same funds had been used to fund activities including service in pubs and restaurants local to one prison, and nearly €2,500 for a staff medal ceremony.

The Kosi review, which is likely to be a key topic of discussion during the Department of Justice’s appearance before PAC on Thursday, found three of the eight prisons under review — Cloverhill, Cork, and Midlands — either kept no account of their spending, or their accounts were incomplete, for the period under consideration 2012-2019.

It found some of the suppliers used by the mess committees, the staff of which had “limited finance experience”, “were in receipt of substantial funds”, with two of the prisons — Midlands and Cloverhill — using one supplier in receipt of amounts in excess of €100,000 each year.

Suppliers to the VMCs were not tendered for.

In the case of Midlands Prison, meanwhile, Kosi found that on 44 occasions its mess committee had attempted to make payments which would have grossly overdrawn itself — including on one occasion in January 2019 when it attempted to make a €21,000 payment when it had just €6,000 on account.

It further found that in December 2018, just under €1,000 was spent on alcohol, including beer, cider and rum, for a “staff recognition ceremony” held in the mess at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, an event contrary to the civil service code of conduct which precludes unlicensed alcohol consumption in Government-owned buildings.