Athbhliain faoi mhaise do gach duine. Apologies have been received from Senator Ruane. I remind members to turn off their mobile phones or switch them to flight mode.

The purpose of this meeting is to have an engagement with the Office of the Inspector of Prisons on the situation in prisons and other related matters. This is a follow-on meeting from a visit the committee had at Limerick Prison prior to Christmas. On behalf of the committee, I welcome from the Office of the Inspector of Prisons Mr. Mark Kelly, Chief Inspector of Prisons; Ms Laura Anderson, Ms Michelle Martyn and Mr. Mark Wolfe, lead inspectors; and Mr. Sam Gluckstein, expert senior adviser on OPCAT implementation. I will invite Chief Inspector Kelly to make an opening statement and then I will invite members of the committee in the order in which they indicate to me to put questions. To manage the committee's time effectively, I propose that each member will have an initial seven minutes to engage with our witnesses. Further to that, we may be in a position to provide second and maybe even subsequent rounds.

Before I invite the opening statement, I wish to advise our guests of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I invite Mr. Kelly to make the opening statement.

The Cathaoirleach has already been kind enough to introduce our delegation so I do not need to repeat those introductions.

I am an international human rights lawyer by background. I have been Chief Inspector of Prisons since 2022, having previously served in a number of international positions including vice-president of the Council of Europe’s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, CPT. We are aware that this committee has been concerned about the situation in our prisons for quite some time. The interest shown by the Cathaoirleach and other members of this committee in the content of our annual report for 2024 is very welcome.

It will not come as any surprise to committee members that the situation described in my 2024 report has significantly worsened in the meantime. At the end of 2024, the prison population was 5,001 people for a capacity of 4,531. This was already many hundreds in excess of the numbers that could be safely accommodated. By midnight last night, those numbers had climbed to 5,747, which meant that 608 people living in prison last night were being obliged to sleep on mattresses on the floor.

In the annual report that is before the committee, we document the reality of what that means for living conditions in prisons. The reality is that those conditions can be described as inhuman and degrading and unworthy of Ireland in 2026. I do not use these words lightly. I am also drawing on over 30 years of experience of looking at prison conditions across the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. The conditions for some people living in Ireland’s prisons at the moment are among the worst that I have seen in any place at any time.

In my opening statement, I also refer to the fact that, exceptionally, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture returned to Ireland just before Christmas. It is really unusual that it would come back so quickly after a visit and publication of a critical report, but it came back because of the gravity of its findings. In its report, committee members will find an echo of the words "inhuman and degrading" to describe the conditions in Ireland's prisons.

What is to be done about this situation? My colleagues and I find it somewhat ironic that almost everyone agrees that this situation is completely unacceptable but it continues to worsen day by day. Every time the Irish Prison Service publishes an additional higher figure for prison population, it does so with the caveat that it is obliged to accept every person sent to it by the courts. Every time the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration is challenged about its responses it responds by promising to increase the capacity of the prison estate by building new prison places, which of course will cost a large amount of money and take many years. We are well aware that no comparable jurisdiction has ever succeeded in building its way out of overcrowding. Reducing the current prison population, not building more prison places, should be the priority.

I also wanted to share with the committee a few words about the need to strengthen the independence of my office. The predecessor to this committee, back in 2022 - I think Senator McDowell may be the only member who is still a member of this committee - looked at a general scheme of the inspection of places of detention Bill.

The purpose of that legislation is to expand the mandate of my office but, crucially, also to enhance its independence. By virtue of the Prisons Act 2007, I am independent in terms of my current statutory functions but it is the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, which keeps a very firm control of our budget. Also, it is the Department and the Minister who have the sole discretion on the publication of our reports. In my opening statement I have given a couple of examples. My annual report for 2023 was submitted to the Minister on 29 March 2024 but only published on 28 February 2025. The annual report for 2024, which members have before them, was submitted to the Minister on 31 March 2025 but only published on 6 November 2025. A further 20 reports from my office are currently with the Minister but are unpublished. Yesterday, I received confirmation that reports on five of those inspections will be published this coming Thursday, which is almost ten months after they were originally submitted to the Minister. That confirmation is welcome.

Unfortunately, and very briefly, the legislation to enhance the independence of my office does not seem to be progressing. Today, the Government legislation programme for spring 2026 was published by the Government Chief Whip and the only reference to the legislation is on page 16, which is still listed for priority drafting and not priority publication. This leaves Ireland as a complete outlier within the European Union. Ireland is the only European Union state that has not acted in order to put in place an effective national preventive mechanism, which means that as Ireland approaches its Presidency of the European Union it will be the only member state in that position.

To his credit, the current Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has acknowledged that resolving this crisis is a political responsibility. He has alluded to the need to enhance community disposals and other alternative sanctions to prison. I note that he repeated at least some of those commitments on the "News At One" today. However, our view is that this is not just the responsibility of any one Minister. It is a whole-of-government responsibility, in particular also including the Minister for Health, given the crisis of mental health in our prisons. We believe that resolving this requires political action to reduce the prison population, place enforceable limits on capacity, strengthen independent oversight, including by our office, and delivering the legislative and policy reforms that have been long promised. All Deputies and Senators who are concerned about human rights and criminal justice can play an active role in ensuring that resolving the crisis in our prisons through political action is given the highest priority. Consequently, we very much welcome this opportunity for further engagement with the Cathaoirleach and this committee. We look forward to all comments and questions

I thank Mr. Kelly. That is probably the starkest and most frank opening statement that this committee in my time as Cathaoirleach has received. It would be refreshing were the contents not so depressing and frustrating. I will now open up the debate to members who will have a seven-minute slot, if any members wish to indicate. I call Deputy Kelly.

I thank Mr. Kelly and his delegation. I echo the sentiments expressed by the Cathaoirleach. I wish everyone who came in front of every committee was as frank, honest and open as Mr. Kelly has been in his opening statement. It makes for very sober reading and even more so when listening to him.

I will refer to the end of the opening statement.

There seems to be an issue with the Department of justice which seems to be going on for some time relating to how long it takes for it to digest the Chief Inspector of Prison's reports. This is not just a one off, it is continuous and going on for years. This is not even a political point, because the Minister is only in a year and it is going on longer. Could Mr. Kelly elaborate on why he thinks it takes so long for his annual reports, inspection reports and reports relating to when somebody unfortunately passes away inside to be regurgitated and published by the Department of justice? What does the Department need to analyse? Why is it necessary to take so long? How long a period is the longest period he has had between submitting a report and publishing a report and what report was that?

I thank the Deputy for his question. I wish I knew the answer. It is something on which we have met with Department officials, including senior officials, on multiple occasions. Our part of the process is when we have completed a report, whether it be an inspection report or a death in custody report, we share it with the director general of the Irish Prison Service, offering her the opportunity to indicate whether the IPS regards it as factually accurate. However, it is only comments on factual accuracy that are invited at that point. The IPS has gotten much better at coming back within a reasonable timeframe confirming factual accuracy. It tends to then happen subsequently when the report is formally transmitted to the Minister. I take the very clear statute-based view that I report to the Minister and I submit my reports directly to the Minister. The Department then engages in its own internal process, which I have the impression is very similar in relation to each of the agencies under its aegis. As members may be aware, we are not the only agency where annual reports are published much later than they are submitted. We are working on it, but it is one of the major advantages that the new legislation would bring, because the new legislation would give my office the power to publish its own reports directly.

That is something we should probably follow up on. Does Mr. Kelly know which report took the longest?

We would have to check. Quite a few have taken quite some time.

Mr. Kelly speaks very passionately about the differential between what many politicians say about needing more prison spaces versus the actual need to manage offenders in a different way. In real terms there needs to be a ceiling because what he says about the prison population and the way in which their needs are met being degrading and inhumane is fairly stark . An increase of 683 in the space of a year is so dramatic, going from 4,718 to 5,761. We are not going to build prisons overnight. At that ratio of increase we are going to be at a stage in four or five years when we are talking about 10,000 people. This is not sustainable as a plan. It is momentous that Mr. Kelly has been so stark in what he is saying. It is quite obvious what he is saying is that we have to start considering alternatives relating to the Probation Service, electronic tagging and various methodologies.

There is a real issues around the Probation Service, which I have statistics on. The resourcing of the Probation Service is not at the level required. The volume of people working in the Probation Service is stagnant and some specialties within it are actually going down. Is that Mr. Kelly's experience?

From what Mr. Kelly outlined to us and looking at alternatives, what does he believe are the issues preventing those alternatives, including the involvement of the Probation Service, electronic tagging and so on, being implemented?

I have spoken with successive Ministers about this and the one example-----

It is not sustainable to keep the numbers going up.

It is absolutely not sustainable, but the one example I have always pointed to, with the clearest evidence possible, is our neighbouring jurisdiction in England and Wales. I have been visiting prisons in England and Wales for over 30 years. When I started doing that, the prison population in England and Wales was in the region of 40,000. It is now approaching 90,000. Over those three decades, and I think my UK-based colleague can confirm this, the British Government has invested millions in building additional prison places to try to catch up and bring the prison population into balance with the available capacity. It has never succeeded. The reason it has not succeeded is that it cannot be done. I am not aware of any example within the Council of Europe space where that has happened successfully. Those countries that have succeeded in keeping their prison populations within a manageable limit and within the limits of human decency have done so because they have a multifaceted approach. They invest in community disposals and probation services, but they also invest in other things such as solutions for homelessness for people who are being released from prison into homelessness. That is why I talk about a whole-of-government approach and the need for multiple Ministers to look at this as an issue.

Returning briefly to the example of the UK, the Deputy may have noticed that when the new UK Government took office, prisons were suddenly top of its priority list. The reason for that was that the UK's prison system had reached bursting point. We saw scenes of prisoners being released and driven away in luxury cars, celebrating the fact they were finally free. The UK, in particular England and Wales, reached that point because of under-investment in alternatives. Following the publication of the report produced by Dame Anne Owers that looked at how the UK had got to where it was, it has now decided to massively invest in probation services and alternatives rather than in building new prisons. In terms of other-----

I am going to move on the next speaker. Mr. Kelly will have the opportunity to expand on these points at a later stage.

I thank Mr. Kelly for being so stark, honest and truthful. The fact that his contribution probably will not make the front page of tomorrow's newspapers tells us all we need to know about the issue. The idea that we have a justice committee whose members have heard about torture and conditions that are so inhumane that they have contributed to the deaths of human beings in this country is just eye-watering. Although we have a history of institutionalised incarceration and abuse that led to decades of State apologies, we have enabled a scenario where we are the only one of 20 countries that has not enacted a mechanism to prevent torture. I find that staggering.

Given the committee for the prevention of torture executive secretary's view that current conditions could amount to a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and that that litigation would stand a high chance of success, has the State already crossed the legal threshold whereby prison conditions amount to a breach of its obligations under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights? If so, what does continued inaction potentially expose the State to?

It is an interesting question and one that requires a judicial answer rather than one from me, but I did go to the trouble of quoting Mr. Chetwynd in the written version of my opening statement. I did so because it is quite unusual for the executive secretary of the CPT to say something like that in a public setting.

The CPT was set up to strengthen the protection given to people in prison and places of detention under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is always very careful not to say something is torture and inhuman or degrading treatment because it takes the view that this is the preserve of the court. What Mr. Chetwynd said was something slightly different. From his professional experience, looking at the situation in Ireland, he thinks that if litigation were to be brought, it would stand a very good chance of success and I very much agree with that. Later this month, I will be meeting with the chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which of course has certain statutory powers to bring cases and legal challenges, and that is one of the things about which we will be speaking when we meet.

Mr. Kelly told us that after inspecting prisons across 46 Council of Europe states, the conditions now present in parts of the Irish prison system are among the worst he has seen anywhere at any time. That is an extraordinary statement. For the avoidance of doubt, will he outline what distinguishes Ireland so negatively at this point? Is it the scale of the overcrowding, the lack of out-of-cell activity, the use of floor mattresses or is a cumulative effect of all of these? What makes Ireland such an outlier in a negative sense?

There is quite a high threshold in the case of the European Court of Human Rights before the court will conclude that there may have been a violation of Article 3. The approach of the court is always that it looks at all the factors that impact on the life of a person living in prison. That is what we do as well. I am not making a sweeping generalisation about the situation in Ireland's prisons. There are plenty of examples of good practice. There are people living in decent conditions. However, there is an increasing number of people - I think the Deputy used the word "cumulative" - who are on the receiving end of a cumulative series of factors, which include very serious overcrowding, being compelled to sleep on a mattress on the floor, not being allowed out of their cell for 22 or sometimes 23 hours a day, sharing that space with another two or three adult men and eating, sleeping and drinking in proximity to an uncovered toilet. It is the combination of all of those factors, plus the fact that the pressures of overcrowding mean prison staff are not in a position to deliver a decent regime to many of the prisoners in Ireland.

I have been expressing concerns about this since the very first inspection I did of Mountjoy Prison back in 2022. I wrote to the then Minister for Justice, Deputy Simon Harris, at the time to say that I was shocked by the conditions I had seen in that prison. At that stage, there were 38 men sleeping on mattresses on the floor. As of midnight last night, there were 165 men in Mountjoy Prison sleeping on mattresses on the floor. That figure can be multiplied by two or three because the actual impact on living conditions is not just for the unfortunate individual on the mattress on the floor; it is for everyone who is sharing a space that is barely bigger than a car parking space in the conditions that I have mentioned.

On the conditions that the chief inspector has mentioned, inevitably most of those individuals will come back out into society, and I am very conscious that we have a recidivism rate in this country of close to seven out of ten. What does living in conditions of such extreme neglect do to a person? What does it do afterwards in terms of trauma, capacity to reoffend and the inability to reintegrate back to a community? What do living conditions like that do to a person?

To answer that, we have to take into account two other considerations that we have not really touched upon. First, there is a very significant proportion of people in our prisons who have mental health issues. Second, there is probably an even bigger proportion of people who have addiction issues. In many cases, they have both.

If we add that consideration to placing people into the conditions about which I have been talking, because overcrowding is putting such pressure on services that can be made available in prison, what we see increasingly are people being committed to prison for relatively short periods of time who have clear mental health problems and addiction issues and who are actively asking for help and assistance with those but who are not able to get that because the staffing is simply not available given the pressure of numbers. To answer the Deputy's question, what that means is many people are leaving prison having had absolutely no meaningful intervention in their lives that could improve their mental health or assist them with their addiction problems and who are, in all probability, headed straight back to prison within a very short space of time.

I thank Mr. Kelly for his presentation. I listened to his contribution when he said that the current population growth in our prisons is unsustainable and we should be making efforts to reduce our prison population. While he was saying that, my thought process was going around. In my opinion as a legal practitioner, it is actually very hard to be sent to jail in this country. People need to have done something extremely serious in the first instance or they need to have a long series of prior convictions. It might start off where, if it is a minor matter, they might get the benefit of the probation Act, or they might get community service and it goes on and on. People might amass quite a number of convictions before they get sent to prison.

I have mentioned to a lot of witnesses over different topics at this committee that our society seems to be going down the road of having no consequences for our actions. I am not necessarily talking about the prison population per se, but there is an emboldening of minors, for example, in wider society to get involved in criminal activity. They are obviously controlled by adults, etc. Mr. Kelly is saying we should reduce the prison population. My concern for the people I represent is that they are concerned there are no consequences for a lot of the nefarious activity that is out there in wider society. How do we marry those two together? On community service, I drove around the country over the Christmas break. There is lots of work that could be done for local authorities. Community service could, without doubt, be harnessed in a far better and more effective way to relieve local authorities, but it is not being done. That is an opportunity that is being wasted in terms of giving alternative punishments.

The whole purpose of a prison sentence is, number one, punishment and, number two, rehabilitation, but it is also to protect society from the nefarious activity that the person has been sentenced for. I just do not know where that balance is to be struck between Mr. Kelly's view about reducing the prison population and protecting the wider population.

There is absolutely no doubt that certain people need to be kept locked up and separate from other members of society because they are genuinely dangerous, but that is not the profile of very many people who are currently in prison. We know that based on assessments made by the Irish Prison Service and the Department of justice. Due to the pressures on the system at the moment and because we cannot simply continue to wedge a completely unlimited number of people into a limited space, very many people who are being committed to prisons now by the courts are going home within a day or two of being sentenced. We are also finding people in prison who are in prison on very low amounts of bail, perhaps €100 cash bail or, in some cases, zero cash bail, but for various reasons they are not in a position to pay that comparatively small amount of money. A significant cohort of people are in prison for minor offences, arising perhaps from their drug use, who the Prison Service itself is finding it possible to release on temporary release or community return schemes.

With respect to the Deputy, there is an assumption behind his question that prison somehow works to protect society from criminality.

No, I do not know if that is the assumption. The assumption is that if a particular dangerous person is incarcerated, society is de facto protected.

Yes but the key word Deputy Brabazon has used is "dangerous". The reality is that many of the people we encounter in prison have mental health issues and addiction issues but nobody who comes into contact with them in an official capacity could reasonably consider that they are dangerous. This is why they are considered for early release. The Deputy used the word "punishment". He said punishment is the principal purpose of imprisonment. Other people might also see rehabilitation-----

I used that word.

-----as being a legitimate purpose. Even if punishment were to be the only purpose of imprisonment, which is not my view, the punishment is deprivation of liberty and not being placed in conditions that are inhuman and degrading. That is not a legitimate thing for the prison system to be.

I was not suggesting that for a second. I was asking Mr. Kelly where the balance was between the two.

That is where the balance sits. The balance sits on providing that if a court decides secure custody is necessary, it takes place in conditions that respect human dignity. At the point human dignity cannot be respected, the balance tips in favour of taking corrective action.

I want to come in as well on the three different inputs. Investment in the Probation Service is very important. It was provided with €57 million last year while the Prison Service received €502 million. Community service orders have not come back to the same level they were at prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. CSO statistics suggest community service orders for short sentences are very important and reduce re-offending over a prison sentence. Resourcing community return and community supports schemes within the prison is important.

The chief inspector has highlighted the conditions we see in prisons. For the men in a four-man cell there are hot temperatures and there are mattresses on the floor. It is a very bad environment, particularly in Cloverhill Prison at the minute. Unless these men get access to addiction and psychology services, access to work training and access to school, then rehabilitation cannot happen. If people are locked up in their cells for 22 hours a day then no rehabilitation is being provided. If we could reduce the number of shorter sentences, there then would be a reduction in addiction waiting lists and Probation Service waiting lists and more space for work, training and education.

I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. It was great to hear Ms Martyn's contribution as just before Christmas, as the Chair alluded to, we visited Limerick Prison, which is male and female. I am going off on a tangent to where I really want to go with my questioning but something that struck me on my visit there was that if people had longer sentences, they got the interventions required, be it for dual diagnosis, mental health or drug addiction. They got the help. If people were there longer than 12 months they got training and a proper education. A very serious matter relating to education is there is very good education and training in the kitchens but the opportunities for work outside of this are non-existent.

Mr. Kelly is right in what he says, as a whole-of-government approach is required. While the ETB provides wonderful support there I did not feel there was joined-up thinking about how people could re-engage in the apprenticeship programme to get back into the workforce once they left. While the gentlemen were working very hard in the kitchen, and we could see the quality and standard of what they were learning, it was not a transferable skill. It should have been but it genuinely was not. There is an issue with regard to third level.

Mr. Kelly stated no comparable jurisdiction has ever succeeded in building its way out of overcrowding. This leads to the question Deputy Brabazon has asked. I am trying to work this out. What are the witnesses suggesting? Do they suggest moving elderly people to care homes and people with mental health issues to more appropriate mental health settings?

Perhaps good behaviour or earlier release could be considered or is Mr. Kelly saying we should have fines and warnings for minor drug offences? I am trying to understand what he was trying to say because there is a huge cohort that would say there is a reason the judge makes a decision and there is a reason people find themselves in prison, because they have committed a crime.

It is as complex as I think the Senator presents it. Countries that have succeeded in reducing or limiting their prison populations recognise that and take a multifaceted approach. It is not the role of my office to set policy for the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration but we have been very clear in successive inspection reports, five of which will be published this Thursday, about the system-level interventions that need to take place. In particular, we have made seven recommendations to the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration setting out what we think needs to be done to tackle overcrowding; improve cell conditions and the complaints system; reduce the use of pretrial detention, which is another key component; and buttress release and reintegration possibilities.

There is no silver bullet solution but a very good starting point is asking oneself why a particular person needs to be in prison. Is prison really being used as a measure of last resort? There are some people who will tell you that it is. There are some judges who are intimately convinced that they only ever use prison as a last resort. It is not what the evidence shows. It is not the demographic that we are actually finding in prison. The Garda Commissioner will tell you that thousands of people transition through Garda cells every year principally in order to access psychiatric services because of their behaviour in public and very many of them end up in prison from which they then have to be diverted, if they are lucky, into mental health or psychiatric services. It is a question of looking seriously at the underlying reasons different cohorts of people are in prison and asking whether sending them to prison is really achieving anything.

One thing we do know is and the director general of the Irish Prison Service gave this evidence to the Committee of Public Accounts-----

I have more questions to come to because I have six minutes and the Cathaoirleach will pull me within the six minutes. That is just the way life is in this committee. Mr. Kelly got to my next question with regard to An Garda Síochána and the cells. What areas with regard to Garda stations and detainee transport fall outside the chief inspector's remit? Is there any way of widening the scope of the inspectorate to protect people's rights? Has Mr. Kelly made suggestions to the Minister? It is the same Minister and Department that are responsible.

It is also the same legislation. It is the inspection of places of detention Bill, which will for the first time give my office the ability to visit Garda stations, court holding cells and prisoner transport. Because we are dealing with the same people transiting through Garda custody, court holding cells, prisons and mental health facilities, my view is that their entire detention journey should be subject to effective independent monitoring. That is what a new national preventative mechanism is intended to do. For example, we are working much more closely with the Mental Health Commission and my counterpart Professor Jim Lucey, who is Inspector of Mental Health Services. Once that new legislation is enacted, we will be able to combine our statutory mandates.

There is one point that if I do not make, I will regret not having made it. On the day we visited Limerick, we were on a particular floor block where there was a gentleman with Alzheimer's disease. He was inappropriately placed. We all said hello to him but he did not know where he was.

What is the role of the inspectorate, or the role of the head prison officer in charge, in being able to liaise with the HSE to have appropriate settings? It was a totally inappropriate setting for that man and my conscience is still not comfortable with it since I have seen it.

Unfortunately, he is far from being the only person in that situation. That is why we are currently embarked on a thematic inspection of the rights of older people in prison. We have found in the E and G wings in the Midlands Prison, in Castlerea Prison, in Arbour Hill and elsewhere prisoners who have no idea that they are in a prison. They do not actually know where they are any more, and there are serious questions about the level of care they are receiving. The IPS, to its credit, is working much more closely with the HSE on this, and many of those people now have healthcare assistants who were initially assigned to them by the HSE. The Irish Prison Service has seen that as such a positive thing that it is now itself recruiting healthcare assistants to come and work with people with dementia, angiosclerosis and so on. The fact remains, however, that for many people in that situation, prison is simply not an appropriate environment. This is not a problem that will go away because, unusually in Ireland, because of the history of institutional and other forms of abuse that Deputy Gannon referred to, there is an increasing cohort of people in their 70s, their 80s and even their 90s who are being sent to prison now and accommodated in prison. That is why we think this thematic inspection will be an important contribution.

I thank Mr. Kelly for his opening statement and the witnesses for their stark honesty. It is refreshing to hear it. When you listen to statements about people eating their dinner on the floor, beside an open toilet, it is like going back to Orwellian times. I remember listening to a podcast recently about Spike Island and its origins and the conditions prisoners were kept in hundreds of years ago, and things have not changed. I remember talking on a report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on the floor of the Dáil back in 2020, when I was the mental health spokesperson for my party. In that report it said that an unwell man was found lying naked in his cell, smeared with faeces, with puddles of urine on the floor and with a urine-soaked poncho for cover. Fast-forward to 2025 and now we have many prisoners, including mentally ill individuals, who are forced to sleep on mattresses on flimsy camp beds. Are we learning anything? I do not see where we are learning or where we are improving anything at all.

In 2025 the IPS reported that 2,000 people within the Prison Service were waiting to see a psychologist. I have seen waiting times for mental health supports. People are waiting 500 to 700 days. Ms Martyn mentioned short sentences. A lot of these people who are waiting for these mental health supports will not get this mental health intervention while they are in prison. Sometimes the only reason they are referred into the judicial system is to get that help because of lack of other things where there are other failures out there. This year, 914 people were reported in the prison system who were waiting for addiction counsellors and there is usually a 12-week waiting time. It is the whole lot. Have the witnesses seen anything at all that will make an improvement in relation to people seeking help with mental health issues or with their addiction issues? Have the witnesses seen any improvement at all? Are we just going backwards?

In fairness to the Irish Prison Service, there are a lot of prison staff working directly with people who have mental health problems. They are incredibly dedicated but however dedicated they might be, it is not their real job, not their real profession, to do that. The problem is really that we have only one secure forensic mental health facility in the country, which is the National Forensic Mental Health Service in Portrane, the successor to the Central Mental Hospital.

I am sorry for cutting across Mr. Kelly. Would I be right in saying that not all facilities in that are open at the moment? Will he comment on that?

That is true. There is an additional ward there that is not yet open, but even if it were to be, there is not sufficient capacity and, moreover, some of the people who are in prison do not require the level of security that would be found in the Central Mental Hospital.

For many years, there has been talk of opening secure regional facilities, which would be step-down facilities for people who end up in prisons and need relatively secure conditions but are primarily patients in treatment. That needs to happen.

The high-level task force on mental health published a report. I understand that an interdepartmental working group continues to discuss the implementation of its recommendations. We have seen some improvements. Transfers to the Central Mental Hospital are happening slightly more quickly. However, the problem is that the waiting list for the Central Mental Hospital is not a real waiting list because you can be number one on the waiting list one week, and the following week someone else with even more acute psychosis may be committed to prison and jump to the top of the waiting list.

Mr. Kelly mentioned the Mental Health Commission and that there might be some collaboration going forward. Is the introduction of the inspection of places of detention Bill stopping that collaboration? Will it be an impediment going forward?

It is not stopping it.

In fairness to the Mental Health Commission, it published a number of reports that did lead to some changes, especially in child and adolescent mental health services. They forced the Government to put in the resources. Is this Bill impeding the witnesses in doing that?

It is stopping us from realising the full potential of the co-operation. We have ramped up co-operation with Mr. John Farrelly, the CEO, and Professor Jim Lucey. Just before Christmas, we had a half day working with them and looking at how we can enhance our co-operation with the commission.

Do they have the same handcuffs on in relation to publishing Bills and reports? Do they have to wait for the Minister to give the okay as well?

Off the top of my head, I am not sure, to be quite honest. I think they can publish their own reports.

They can publish reports. Reports have come from the Mental Health Commission in relation to child and adolescent mental health services and other facilities. They have led to change. The fact that the witnesses are impeded is taking away from the work they can be doing. Mr. Kelly mentioned that 20 reports are still waiting to be published or that the Minister agreed would be published.

Yes.

In the brief time left, could Mr. Kelly speak to the nature of those reports?

Seven of them are reports on inspections. Just yesterday afternoon, I got the good news that five of them are to be published on Thursday of this week.

Is that because the witnesses are before the committee?

I could not possibly speculate on that.

I do not believe in coincidence.

The other reports are death-in-custody investigation reports.

Ireland has not ratified the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. That seems like low-hanging fruit for the Government. It could and should be done. Is there any reason for its not being ratified?

It is interesting that the Deputy says that because this committee, in fact, recommended that the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture, OPCAT, should be ratified back in 2022, as can be seen from the report of pre-legislative scrutiny on the legislation. There is not formally a need for legislation for the OPCAT to be ratified. It could be done. It is now nearly 20 years since-----

If it can be done, is it a matter of a Minister or the Government signing off? How does it work?

It would have to ratified as an international treaty, so an instrument would have to be deposited with the United Nations. It would be a Government decision.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions so far. Some 110 staff members were directly assaulted in prisons last year. Over 200 members of staff left the Prison Service as a result of their injuries last year. We have spoken an awful lot about mental health. One of the remits of the witnesses is investigating management matters within the Prison Service. We have 3,800 prison staff in the country and 5,500 prisoners. We have a serious issue with morale within our prisons. I believe the two are interconnected. It is not just about overcrowding. We also have an issue whereby the staff themselves are being attacked. They are leaving the service.

Their mental health is equally important to their ability to carry out their duties, as is that of the prisoners themselves. I would like to hear Mr. Kelly's views on what he has noted during his inspections, because his report is very detailed but does not go into much detail regarding the staff and running from a management point of view.

I thank the Deputy. There is much more detail in the five reports which will be published on Thursday. The Deputy put her finger on something crucial. I refer to our neighbouring jurisdiction, in England and Wales. As overcrowding shot up in that jurisdiction, something similar to what is happening in Ireland began to happen, which is that attacks on staff increased. There was a knock-on effect, because in order to keep running a prison system, you have to be able to recruit new staff and retain them. In England and Wales, because the prisons have become so much more violent and staff are much more at risk, the attrition rate of newly recruited staff is very steep, and it is extremely difficult for the prison service there to keep new staff, because they go into a dangerous environment. I am sensitive to the concern that the Deputy raises and I am worried that exactly the same effects might be replicated here.

We also engage with many staff during our inspections. We do surveys with them and look at what their needs are. As the chief inspector said, we will see more detail of staffing needs once the reports are published.

It is really difficult for them and getting increasingly difficult, not just to help manage prisoners and offer them the services but also what I would call external attacks, such as the use of drones to deliver knives and drugs into the prison systems. I believe that netting is being used now but they have found ways to burn the nets to drop everything in. Prison staff are faced with such huge challenges. I wonder about the training they have and the tools they have to deal with everything.

On overcrowding, I will touch on what Deputy Brabazon alluded to. I have the impression, as a practitioner, that a custodial sentence is quite hard to come by. When there is an increasing population, I believe that we have to look better at probation services and preventative measures. I speak frequently about my fears of intergenerational issues and how they pass from the granny to the mother to the child. That worries me. However, we also seem to peddle a narrative that every crime is down to a mental health issue or some sort of addiction issue, and that is just not true. It is certainly part of the problem but the reality is that the vast majority of people who find themselves in prison do so because of a criminal activity. The element of punishment has to hold through. We talk about building more prisons and more prison spaces. To be quite honest, when we talk about the ratios we have been talking about, I cannot understand for the life of me why we have not been quicker at getting more prisons and spaces built. We have to tackle this with a 360° approach, not just focusing on one thing. That does not take away from the conditions. I will raise the issue of the independence of the inspector's office to highlight things, which I think is vitally important, but I believe that when a crime is committed, there has to be a punitive level, and the more serious the crime, the longer the time.

I thank the Deputy. I do not think she was intending to suggest that anyone is here to peddle a narrative, but there are plenty of people in prison who have not been convicted of a criminal offence because they are on remand and are awaiting their trial. Many of those people perhaps do not need to be in prison while that is happening. There is also a pertinent question about the value of short sentences. Many other jurisdictions have looked at a cost-benefit analysis.

I do not just mean money, but the cost-benefit analysis to society of sentences of less than 12 months. Very often the empirical evidence is that those sentences end up serving very little purpose in terms of the protection of society for the reasons we have talked about. An overcrowded prison system cannot deliver the interventions that might alter behaviour.

Does Mr. Kelly know the proportion of prisoners on remand in the total prison population?

It is about 20%. For women it is higher, at about 30%. There are factors that cause this. I guess there could be other things like bail support schemes as well in terms of interventions.

Generally speaking, what is the proportion of time they spend before being remanded?

Is the Deputy asking the length of time they are on remand?

The length of time they are there on remand until they are brought to the courts to be charged.

I do not know the average time but 20% of the prison population today is on remand.

Are they there for three days, a week or two weeks?

It depends. I know for a very small number it is over two years, but there are 12 people on remand for 12 years. They could be serving a sentence. I am not 100% sure of that, so the Deputy would have to get the statistics from the Prison Service.

One of the things we do is attend committal interviews when people are first received into prison. We sit in on those. Quite frequently these days I am seeing governors interview people who have just come in and are on remand, waiting trial. They are effectively already telling them that they will try to get them home the same day because there is no space in which to put them. The revolving door is back, essentially.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions and participation today. I would just like to ask a little bit more about if there were any further statistics the witnesses might be able to offer in relation to health inequalities as a result of the poor conditions in prison and maybe a little bit also around mental health and addiction issues. It would be helpful if there were some statistics we could use to consider health inequalities both in relation to the general population but also if available, versus populations of those who are incarcerated in other jurisdictions, just to try to comprehend the extent of the problems.

Yes, it is a mixed picture. When we carry out our inspections we take medical professionals with us to look both at somatic and psychiatric care. In quite a few of the prisons the level of basic GP-type care can actually be quite good. The level of access to external specialist services can sometimes be even better than it is in the community. The standard we apply is that people living in prison have the right to at least the same standard of healthcare as they would have in the community. Our conclusion in many reports on the somatic or physical side is that is being met in quite a lot of prisons. The big problems that we come across relate to dentistry. By the time they are committed many prisoners already have dental health problems and there are very long waiting lists in many prisons to see dentists. However, top of the list is mental health. I do not have statistics just now but we can furnish those to the Cathaoirleach afterwards.

We completed a thematic inspection on the quality of mental health and psychiatric care in seven prisons, which is a very detailed report. The overarching conclusion was that there is an absence of effective clinical pathways for people in prison with mental health issues. There are very detailed health care sections in each of our inspection reports. The lead inspector, Ms Martyn, may want to add something.

I just have a question on that. Mr. Kelly made the point about the comparison of the seven prisons. Was it possible to ascertain whether the worst of the seven was in relation to more severe overcrowding or was it across the board?

What we were really looking at there was acute psychiatric disturbance. In each of the seven prisons, we came across people who had acute mental health issues who were not receiving the right care at the right time in the right place.

As the chief inspector has said, during our general inspections, we look at particular areas: respect and dignity; safety and security; purposeful activity and resettlement; and health and well-being. Health and well-being is one particular area of focus in each inspection we attend to. As the chief inspector has said, medics come in with us to look at various aspects of healthcare provision in the prisons. The Senator will see the analysis and assessment of each prison. Another issue relates to healthcare resources and night-time nursing. There is sometimes one night-time nurse for a prison such as Midlands Prison, in which there are currently 1,000 men. During our inspection, there were about 800 men in the prison but there was only one nurse on night duty at that time. That is quite significant given that, as we all know, healthcare needs among the prisoner population are quite diverse.

Mr. Kelly made reference to the numbers on mattresses in the men's prison at Mountjoy in late 2002 versus today. There was a huge jump. Ms Martyn mentioned that Cloverhill is probably the worst of the Irish prisons. Do we have comparative statistics regarding those in suboptimal accommodation in Cloverhill at present?

Yes. There are 518 people in Cloverhill at the moment while the capacity is 433. It is at 120% of its capacity and overcrowded. There are 61 men on mattresses on the floor. Do we have the figure for when we-----

Some 25%, 112 of 433, were accommodated four to a cell as of our inspection in 2023.

As I was saying previously, for Cloverhill, that figure can be multiplied by three to get the actual number of people who are affected because they are three to a cell or sometimes four to a cell.

It will be our job to consider what has been said today and to make recommendations to rectify the situation - for lack of a better term - or bring about improvements in the Prison Service. Mr. Kelly said that, in comparison to our counterparts among the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, the prison conditions he has seen in Ireland are as bad as anywhere else. What jurisdictions would he hold up as being close to optimal if we are looking at international comparators? I refer to rates of recidivism and prisoners being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve and being held in far more humane conditions than those Mr. Kelly has outlined today.

It is quite difficult because many of the comparable jurisdictions are also currently badly affected by overcrowding. One Council of Europe and European Union state that has attracted quite a lot of attention is the Netherlands, which has been successful in reducing its prison population. It has actually been shutting prisons in recent years. It has done that through the combination of factors I was talking to Senator Rabbitte about. It has taken a multifaceted approach designed to make sure that only those people who absolutely need to be sent to prison are actually sent to prison.

I apologise for being late. I welcome the chief inspector and his team members. There is an element of déjà vu to all of this. I think back to the time when I was Minister for justice.

We understood at the time that we had to invest significantly more in prison accommodation. Thornton Hall has sat undeveloped for 20 years. It needs to be built and Mountjoy is not capable of being rehabilitated as a prison. That is why my first point is to ask if the witnesses agree that we should get the go-ahead with the Thornton Hall project because it has all the infrastructure now laid out to it, like separate access, separate services and the like.

The next point I ask them to deal with is the mental health issues in prison. When I was Minister for justice, I was struck that the Central Mental Hospital functioned at one level. However, it saw itself as a hospital and it did not see itself as an integral part of how day-to-day prisoners were dealt with. I will give a flavour as maybe the witnesses and my fellow committee members have forgotten this. There were padded cells, which were shocking, and they were got rid of. At the same time, we had the difficulty that what they are now describing as being worse than ever was examined by the Gary Douch commission of inquiry. That dealt with both mental health issues and how they were dealt with, and with overcrowding in Mountjoy where a person was killed by a fellow inmate in a room containing, I think, 14 people overnight.

I turn to another issue. I totally agree that short prison sentences should never be imposed unless there is some extraordinary reason. That applies to domestic violence and a lot of issues of that kind. In my time, although in fairness I do think it is now not the case, some District Court judges would impose a custodial sentence on the understanding that the accused would appeal the sentence, be given bail pending an appeal and be allowed out by the Circuit Court. Some people fell through the cracks, went straight to jail and for one reason or another never got out. It seems to me that the witnesses are correct that the consequences of imprisonment are so shocking for young men in particular, who are most likely to get a short sentence, that everything must be done to avoid that unless it is absolutely necessary. It must be the penalty of last resort.

We have a bail system in Ireland which, despite the referendum, is liberal by comparison with Great Britain or Northern Ireland. One of the consequences is that the number of people on remand is huge because we have one of the slowest common law criminal processes. I am conscious that in England people have been convicted and imprisoned for murder, including a policeman who was sentenced to life within nine months of his alleged offence. In recent times an Irish citizen in Boston was tried twice since last St. Patrick's Day by the American system. I believe there has been a conspiracy of silence. I do not want to put it more strongly than that. There is an underlying attitude of relaxation that it is all right to have a situation where somebody accused of a serious offence is left on remand for a trial in two or three years’ time, and that is somehow acceptable. That must be a factor in the situation the witnesses are referring to.

I believe there is no possibility of rehabilitation for a lot of prisoners if drugs are rife in prison for many prisoners.

One of the plans for Thornton Hall was that there would be drug-free areas and mandatory drug testing for prisoners in those areas, so that those who wanted to get off drugs could get off drugs and be in a different and lighter regime. I ask Mr. Kelly to comment on all of those points.

I share the Senator’s sense of déjà vu on a number of these issues. There is absolutely no doubt that there was a need years ago to look at the future capacity of the prison system. That did not happen in an effective way, and we are where we are today. I do not dispute that there may be a need for some additional capacity while the bigger systemic issues are being looked at. We have slightly different views in relation to Thornton Hall. My major reservation is that the original plan was for a very large prison, and very often very large prisons have great difficulty delivering the kinds of rehabilitative outcomes that smaller places can. I am not in a position-----

It was to be divided into units of different kinds.

Yes. I heard the current Minister at lunchtime today indicating that he is looking again at that possibility.

Former Minister Alan Shatter said that ten years ago.

He did. Déjà vu.

The Senator alluded to the Gary Douch case. Unfortunately, it is our view - I carefully read Gráinne McMorrow’s report at the time - that the lessons of that case have not been learned. My colleague, who is the lead inspector on deaths in custody, has encountered a number of cases in which prisoners have died at the hands of other prisoners because inappropriate risk assessment processes took place when they were first admitted. We agree in relation to shorter prison sentences, especially in the context of the expenditure of public funds. The director general of the IPS recently told the Committee of Public Accounts of this House that it now costs close to €99,000 a year to keep a prisoner in prison.

On the question of bail, for me this signals a need to look in a cohesive way at the operation of the criminal justice system as a whole. One can go to the District Court in Clover Hill and find people who are being bailed by the court, but are still being transferred to the prison for their bail application to be processed because it is not currently done by the Courts Service. It is another example of the added value that the inspection of places of detention Bill will bring. In addition to giving my office a mandate to inspect custody and prisoner transport, it will also include a mandate in relation to court holding facilities. Along with my colleagues from the OPCAT team, who are here today as well, I will be beginning work with the Courts Service this year to look at these interstitial issues. The Senator is absolutely correct to point to that.

Before I open up for a second round of questions, I have a few comments and perhaps questions. In many ways, this takes up from where Mr. Kelly left off. In order to have an effective prison system, it needs to be taken as part of an overall criminal justice system. The difficulty we have is that at every level, there is the dysfunction that this committee hears about. We do not have enough gardaí, particularly community gardaí. We do not have enough resources in terms of youth diversion, mental health or addiction services. In many respects, if we had enough investment and enough resources in those three areas alone, we would substantially address a number of the issues he raised.

As Senator McDowell has said, we have a lethargic court system that results in a situation where people who are on remand are finding themselves in prison. Last year, 40,000 people committed crimes while out on bail. All of that undermines confidence in the system. Mr. Kelly has very forcefully set out the dysfunction within the prison system. I put on the record that I agree entirely that putting somebody in prison for a short period of time is counterproductive in so many ways.

It costs a fortune, and there is nothing that we deliver. In fact, in many respects, it provides the apprenticeship for people, particularly young men, to go on to commit other crimes, and often more serious crimes, because rather than actually getting the supports that might prevent them from committing crimes, they are put into a cell with a number of other people and get contacts for when they get out. I do not know how we deal with that in the short-term, because people rightly expect a penalty to be paid, particularly by people who are involved in persistent criminal activity in local communities. In the absence of having all of the other areas functioning outside of the prison system, I am not sure how we address that. However, in the short-term, one question needs to be answered. In terms of the prison population over the past year, from what I gather, crime statistics have not risen at the same level over the past 12 months. What precisely is driving that increase in the prison population? Can Mr. Kelly answer that?

That is really a question for a criminologist but it seems to be a combination of factors, including a backlog arising during the Covid pandemic. Senator McDowell talked about the court system being lethargic. There has been additional recruitment of members of An Garda Síochána, which may have led to an increased detection rate, but it is the kind of thing that would benefit from detailed policy analysis. There is policy capacity within the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, but the focus does seem to be primarily on building future capacity rather than looking at underlying causes.

One of the things-----

The sentencing guidelines and court structures were the same in January 2025 as 2026. There has been no legislation or policy change that I am aware of, yet we have an additional 1,000 people in the prison system, or thereabouts. What has been the factor in that? Is it at the courts level? Is that what Mr. Kelly is suggesting?

It is the number of people being committed to prison by the courts. The reason there has been a big uptick in the number of people being committed to prison by the courts is something that needs to be looked at more closely.

In terms of the prison experience, to use that horrible phrase, we are where we are. We also know, however, that the single greatest measure that can be taken to reduce crime rates is reducing recidivism. The truth of the matter is that the majority of young men who are in prison today, when they are released, are going to commit further crimes. That is what the statistics tell us about the current prison population. In the circumstances that the Prison Service finds itself today, are there immediate steps Mr. Kelly thinks could be taken to help address recidivism within the prison population as it stands?

Lead inspector Ms Martyn might want to add something on this, but the most immediate step is the need to release the safety valve in terms of the level of overcrowding, because it is the single biggest factor that impedes effective intervention. One of the things that prisoners tell us consistently when we conduct our confidential surveys with them is the huge value they place on education and meaningful work. However, in all of our prisons there are many more prisoners who would wish to participate in education and work of vocational value than currently can, because the pressure of numbers means it is not possible to offer those activities and interventions to them. There is also a clear need to look at the continuity of treatment and what happens when people leave prison, even if there has been an effective intervention in prison. Is it possible to continue that in the community? Very often the answer is "No".

Just to add, it is about access to work, training and education. We did a thematic inspection on education and work training, and the Department of education inspectorate assesses the quality of education in the prisons we inspect, but one of the key things was the lack of certification that people were getting.

If they were getting accredited certification where they can get a job when they come out, that would be one aspect. The Irish Prison Service, I think, had statistics that around 25% or 26% have access to our training. That is a general statistic but our inspection reports are broken down per prison with regard to the level of access to our training in our inspection reports. It is also about sentence management and planning, where someone has access to an integrated sentence management, ISM, officer. ISM officers are co-ordinators who are supposed to develop a sentence plan with the person. Tailored interventions are really important. Those who are on shorter sentences are probably less likely to get that intervention. From the outside they should be getting that intervention to address the causes of their offending in the first place, whether it is trauma or addiction in the community rather than ever ending up in the prison to begin with.

I thank the witnesses for their continued engagement on it. It goes back to where Mr. Kelly talked about the whole-of-government approach. I keep going back to our visit to Limerick before Christmas. I found it a fantastic experience to hear first-hand from the prison officers and the staff. The engagement from the prison officers was second to none and I have to compliment on the work they do.

When we went through the women's prison, I thought the listening ear room was fantastic. It is supported by the Irish Red Cross. It is a system it has in place if people are finding it difficult, where they are able to go to one of the particular rooms and have a conversation on it. I do not know if that is done in all prisons right across but it was in Limerick Prison. It was fabulous.

The number of women who exit into homelessness every year out of Limerick Prison - I am only talking about Limerick - was 500 on an annual basis. One of the prison officers said to us that if there was a step-out approach where people were able to transition into, knowing there was supported housing there for them, it would be something. It would be fantastic to ensure there is not a repeated circle of in-and-out. The other point was on the support for women when they are in there. One particular lady who was in prison had social housing and her mother was her main support. Her mother passed away suddenly, her children were taken into care and now her house was lost. She had no home to come out to. I do not know what comes up in the witnesses' reports in relation to what we can do to support that.

I am also a member of the Traveller committee. There are findings we have from the Traveller committee that within the prison services, there is a 6% over-representation within the prison services. They quantify and collect the data on it. I would like to get some of the witnesses' thoughts in relation to what I am putting out there in regard to a lot of the experience I witnessed on the day.

I thank the Senator. We have been to both of the prisons for women - the Dóchas Centre and Limerick women's prison. I would certainly share the concern the Senator has about the release process. One of the reports due to be published in the near future is on the Dóchas Centre. It includes a recommendation that consideration should be given to the creation of a reintegration unit to support women in the lead-up to their release from prison. We have said that should include access to community-based reintegration programmes for all women preparing to rejoin the community. Another point we made is something that we think constitutes direct discrimination against women, which is that there are two open prisons for men - Shelton Abbey and Loughan House - but there is no open prison facility for women.

Even if you are at the end of a very long sentence, as some women in both Limerick and the Dóchas Centre are, there is nowhere else for you to go apart from being released directly into the community or some of the NGO-supported programmes. We think that serious consideration should be given to creating an open prison for women.

Could Mr. Kelly address the over-representation of Travellers within the prison services?

Yes, that is certainly something we see. Unfortunately, we have seen in our death-in-custody investigations a number of cases involving young Traveller men who might not have been anticipated to be at risk. It is something we want to look at more in detail and we have already engaged with some of the Traveller associations. It could well be a future thematic for the inspectorate.

We also-----

I thank the Senator. I am just going to allow others in and let the guests make some final remarks.

There has been an increase in people being placed in prison awaiting deportation flights. Have the witnesses come across that and has it created different dynamics or extra burden on the system?

Yes, we have. In that connection, we have a real concern about another piece of legislation that is highly topical. In fact, I understand the Minister took it to Cabinet today. That is the legislation to give effect to the EU pact on migration. It is the general scheme of the international protection Bill. What that proposes to do is set up a new chief inspector of asylum and border procedures but that chief inspectorate will not be independent of the Minister. At the moment, unfortunately, people who are held for immigration or deportation reasons are placed in prison. We do not think they should be in prison; they have not committed a criminal offence. If, in future, new places of detention are created for immigration detainees, it is not clear to us that they will be subject to independent oversight or that the new chief inspector of asylum and border procedures will be able to operate in a way that is consistent with either the EU charter or the optional protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. It is something else this particular committee might want to keep a close eye on when that legislation comes before it, which I understand will happen much more quickly, unfortunately, than the inspection of places of detention Bill.

Certainly. There is also anecdotal evidence from some of the prison guards we have met over time in relation to judges sending people to prison in the expectation that they will get some treatment for addiction. Invariably, that does not really happen or is not available. What sorts of pressures does that place on both the system and the individuals?

When judges do that, it may sometimes be out of a sense of exasperation, in that this is the only option they can think of. This comes back to the difficulty courts have in having disposals other than prison or secure custody for people with mental health issues. It might have been the case, once upon a time, that that would be the outcome but unfortunately, our experience now is that is very rarely the case. There are some good examples, and I would commend in particular the prison staff and the psychiatric team in D2 in Cloverhill, who work very assiduously to divert people from prison custody to psychiatric care through going back to the court and requesting that a judge bails them to a psychiatric facility. The overall legality of that process is questionable.

Very questionable.

The year before last, I was involved in a documentary, "Gaelic in the Joy". I think Deputy Gannon was involved in that himself. While we were in there - and this stuck with me - the governor at the time, Mr. Eddie Mullins, turned around and said he could basically throw a blanket around the parts of Dublin where most of the prisoners came from. It would be parts of my area and parts of the areas of Deputies Gannon and Brabazon. What underpins that is poverty. We have talked already and could have a whole different debate on how a lack of services and poverty underpins how people end up in the criminal system. That is another debate.

I want to make the point that we absolutely do need consequences for crimes but it should not only be that. We need to have rehabilitation. I know Senator McDowell mentioned segregation and drug-free parts of prisons. We actually had one of those in Mountjoy in the form of the progression unit. For people coming to the end of their prison sentences and who were going to progress back into society, this might have acted as a deterrent to recidivism. They had to be drug-free to be in there but that unit has closed down.

That tells me that there is no emphasis on rehabilitation in Irish prisons at the moment. Will Mr. Kelly comment on this issue? How does he rate the rehabilitation services in prisons? Do they lead to people not recommitting crimes and engaging in recidivism?

In fairness to the Irish Prison Service, there is a huge emphasis on rehabilitation. It is acknowledged as being a central part of the IPS's work. There are pockets of extremely good practice and there are success stories. However, it comes back to the factors that we have touched upon repeatedly. There are structural constraints, in particular overcrowding, which means that the aspiration of the IPS to be a moment in someone's life when they might be rehabilitated and successfully reintegrated into the society in very many cases is not being realised in practice, despite the best efforts of prison staff in many cases.

Does the lack of prison staff have an impact on that or is it the overcrowding? For example, I worked in addiction services in the past. Where I worked, we had a service that when people got out of prison we had someone there to meet them and help them with housing and whatever else they might have needed. We had people who used to go into the prisons - they were called community prison links workers - and more often than not when they went in to meet the prisoner to start putting things in place, the prisoner did not get the help he or she needed because there was no one to bring the prisoner down for the visit. Is that is still an issue?

That is still happening. The Deputy mentioned governor Mullins, who was the governor in Mountjoy at the time. I am sure the Deputy knows that he is now the chief executive of Merchants Quay Ireland and is still involved in these issues. I recently met with a number of the organisations that are attempting to provide those services to discuss how we might be able to assist them to raise some of these issues of access and how we can better protect prisoner facing services. I hope that work will have a positive outcome. I am certainly prepared to also engage with the IPS on those practices. What seems to be happening is that it is day by day and prison by prison whether or not there will be a staff member available to escort someone who wants to assist. That is not good enough. It has to be more programmed and more planned. Even if staff have to redeployed to hospital escort duties or court escort duties, certain core services, of which addiction is one, should be guaranteed.

Going back to women who are prison at the moment, it is fair to say that the offences for which women find themselves in prison are very different from the ones for which men find themselves in prison. I engage quite a bit with groups like the Red Door Project in Drogheda and Women's Aid in Dundalk. They always say that the underlying factor for 100% of the women who present to them with addiction issues is domestic or sexual abuse. If we carry that through, the underlying problem for a woman with a severe or recurring addiction is that she was the victim of domestic or sexual violence at some stage during her lifetime. The women's prison in Limerick has services to help women to try to deal with those issues and give them the necessary supports for when they come out. Is that across the board? Are we missing those services in other prisons such as the Dóchas Centre, for example? They are essential. If we follow the thread, a trauma, a violent incident or a crime perpetrated against a woman at an early stage or some other stage in her life led her into an addiction and led her into committing an offence that potentially put her in prison. It seems like a really vicious circle and one that if we go back to the beginning was through no fault of her own. I know there are services to help prisoners in Limerick. Have they been rolled out across the board? What more can be done?

The history of prisons is that they were designed by men for men and they remain broadly-----

Is that not like all of Ireland?

Prisons certainly are archetypal patriarchal structures. That is absolutely clear. We very much welcome the aspiration that the new women's prison in Limerick would take a trauma-informed approach.

When we did our inspection there, we brought Dr. Sharon Lambert, who is an expert in trauma-informed approaches, with us so we could look at the prison through that lens. Rather than just looking at the nice garden and the attractive bedrooms, we actually looked at whether the interventions were effective. I am sorry to say that our finding was the pressure of overcrowding meant that the aspiration to deliver the trauma-informed approach was not being fully delivered in practice. Based on our findings, it is not being delivered at all in the Dóchas Centre. That will be an interesting report for people to read when it is published in due course. We found that the Dóchas Centre was being run as if it was a prison for men. I found this very disappointing on a personal level because I went into the Dóchas Centre in a different international capacity shortly after it opened. At the time, it was a model of its kind. It had houses which were small communities that were functioning in a way that normalised - as much as you can - the experience of being in prison. That is no longer the case in the Dóchas Centre, with the exception of certain units.

Given that we only have two prisons for women in Ireland, at the very least there should be a high watermark of intervention and there is a need for it to be on a trauma-informed approach. The Deputy is right: the vast majority of women in prisons have suffered forms of sexual and gender-based violence.

I want to reiterate what the chief inspector said about the whole-of-government approach. If they had had access to and engagement with those services prior to being imprisoned, many of the women would not be in prison to begin with.

Deputy Ward spoke about different demographics. A study carried out years ago profiled the prisoner population. I do not think one has been carried out recently. The study highlighted the various factors, such as early school leaving. It is a really good study. I also want to highlight the number of people on restricted regimes in our prisons. That means they are on 21- or 22-hour lock-up. If you are on a 21- or 22-hour lock-up, your access to services is limited.

I want to ask a couple of questions related to whistleblowers and the role of the Office of the Inspector of Prisons in dealing with them. Will Mr. Kelly outline what happens in practical terms if his office is contacted by a whistleblower from within the Prison Service? Does he have any formal powers to act on information from a whistleblower? Does he have the power to trigger a special inspection, review or follow-up on the back of information brought to his attention? Does he have to refer matters to another enforcement body? How exactly does it work in real terms?

In the legal sense of dealing with whistleblowing, we do not have a role in relation to protected disclosures. However, we do receive information in confidence from people within the Prison Service and from prisoners. We have a right to do that under rule 44 of the prison rules, but we are not the competent authority when it comes to protected disclosures from the Prison Service. In principle, it is the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. If there was a case that raised a potential conflict, under the new legislation in which I think the Ombudsman has assumed a role as the Protected Disclosures Commissioner, his office can operate as a clearing house for what would be the appropriate authority to investigate.

Is Mr. Kelly's office not informed of protected disclosures that have been made in that formal protected disclosures place?

That is correct.

Is that the case even though it could have an implication in terms of information that might be useful to Mr. Kelly's office in terms of prison inspections?

It has to be handled under the relevant protected disclosures legislation. It does not prevent anyone who may have made a protected disclosure from simultaneously providing our office with information in confidence.

In that regard, when the office receives such information in confidence, how does it act on it?

It depends on what the information is but we take it into account in the exercise of our strategy mandate, either in the context of inspection or, if it were relevant, information that could inform a death in custody report.

I thank the witnesses for their engagement. I propose that we publish the opening statement from the Office of the Inspector of Prisons on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed. I thank Mr. Kelly and his colleagues for taking part in our meeting. It was a very productive, constructive and helpful engagement from the committee's perspective. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.