Three questions for the new consumer agency

THERE is much discussion, especially since the introduction of the euro, about value for money, and rightly so.

The first question the new National Consumer Agency should ask the Government, on behalf of the taxpayer, is: why is the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, building a new prison in the middle of a farm in north County Dublin instead of continuing the refurbishment of the existing prisons, including Mountjoy, on which some €40 million has been invested in recent times?

The second question is another value for money one, and closely connected to the first: why is the taxpayer buying 150 acres of land for McDowell’s proposed prison for €30 million when official figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the average price of agricultural land would value this site at less than €5 million?

The third question asks itself - what’s going on here?

Nessa McNamara

Kilcoskan

The Ward

Co Dublin