Government playing catch-up in bid to ease prison overcrowding

Ireland’s prisons are at 120% capacity, prompting a €495m plan for 1,500 new spaces and a revived Thornton Hall project

A prison guard at Cork Prison. Picture: Dan Linehan

This Government will “take a comprehensive approach to the development of the next Irish Prison Service’s (IPS) capital strategy, ensuring the availability of modern detention facilities with adequate capacity”.

This was the only sentence in the 2020 programme for government agreed by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party regarding prison capacity.