Do we really need a new prison that will cost over €100m a year to run?

THERE was an American senator one time who said “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re looking at big money”.

I sometimes feel that’s the world we’ve started to live in here. Public policy decisions are made every day that cost millions, sometimes tens of millions, and they’re never debated in any real sense.

A government that can set out to cause hardship and misery at the expense of, say, Hepatitis C sufferers can casually decide to spend €100 million on one public policy decision, and we’re never really told anything about it.