I welcome the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, and the staff from his Department.

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach and the Seanad for the opportunity to discuss this very important issue this afternoon. Obviously, a very important part of my functions as Minister for justice is responsibility for prisons in Ireland. I am pleased to say that since I have become Minister, I have had the opportunity to visit seven of our prisons to date and, in the very near future, I will be visiting two more. I expect, certainly by the middle of this year, that I will have visited every prison in the country. The first thing I want to say is that I get an opportunity through the visits to see first-hand the professionalism and dedication of the staff of the Irish Prison Service. I start by extending my thanks to them. I never go to a prison without meeting and talking freely to the prisoners, which I can do. That is also a very important and educational process for me to see the human face of the individuals who are within our prison system.

I am obviously aware of the challenges that exist and the difficulties that current capacity constraints pose to those who work and live in our prisons. I also note the recent reports on prison conditions from the Inspector of Prisons. I would like to acknowledge the very important work undertaken by Mr. Mark Kelly, the Inspector of Prisons. I had an opportunity to meet him face-to-face not that long ago. I am very conscious of the important role he plays in ensuring that I am held to account for the prison system. His reports highlight the challenges faced within prisons and underline the urgency of investment to reduce the impact of overcrowding and ensure there is adequate prison capacity to underpin an effective criminal justice system.

When we look at the issue of capacity, it is worthwhile remembering the statistics. Back in 2009, the capacity of Ireland's prisons was for 4,000 people. Today, in 2026, the capacity is for 4,700 people. Clearly, we have had a population increase in those 17 years. We have had a population increase of approximately one million people. I do not believe that building prison space is the solution to our criminal justice issue, but it is certainly important that our prison capacity keeps in line with the growth in our population. Regrettably, it is the case that over the past 15 or 16 years we did not keep growing the prison capacity in the way we should have done for the purpose of ensuring that we did not have overcrowding. I have made it clear that I am determined to drive reform in the area of our prisons, invest in the prison estate and its people and provide for the humane treatment and rehabilitation of all those in custody.

Obviously, for the criminal justice system to operate effectively, there have to be consequences for serious criminal behaviour, and the main consequence and penalty we have is incarceration. I also want to ensure that we have a modern, fit-for-purpose prison system that allows staff to work to the best of their abilities. Obviously, increasing capacity is not the only solution to the challenges faced by our prison system. There are other solutions that I am looking at as well. I am pursuing a dual approach to overcrowding by implementing policies aimed at the increased use of non-custodial sanctions to try to reduce offending and divert people away from imprisonment. However, expanding the prison estate to deal with capacity will remain a very significant part of my approach. I cannot respond to the overcrowding issue in prisons without seeking to increase the amount of that capacity that is available.

I will deal with the issue of increasing prison capacity. Since 2024, 232 spaces have been constructed across the prison estate; 126 were constructed in 2024 and 106 were constructed in 2025. The majority of them are now in use, and I hope to see another 65 spaces in 2026 and 70 spaces in 2027. On conclusion of the national development plan review in July 2025, I secured a record capital investment of €67.9 million for 2026, as part of a total investment of €500 million from 2026 to 2030. That €500 million is being invested in building projects to further increase capacity, reflecting our commitment to increase prison capacity and modernise the estate with a target of delivering approximately 1,500 spaces by 2031. It will be a very large building programme. It will include a large extension to the existing Cork Prison, a new block in Wheatfield Prison and an additional block at Midlands Prison. This is in addition to spaces at Castlerea, Mountjoy and the Dóchas Centre, where an extension to Rowan House is expected to accommodate 50 female prisoners. I also plan to fund the planning and commencement of construction of a new prison at Thornton in north County Dublin. I have also sought and secured an exemption from what is referred to as the public spending guidelines. That allows me to move straight to approval gate 2, which will considerably expedite the process in terms of getting those prison spaces constructed. The Prison Service also has a very good record in terms of construction on its estates.

I have also introduced a pilot structured temporary release scheme for suitable candidates in Limerick women's prison. Recognising the positive impact of the pilot so far, the eligibility criteria for the scheme are now being extended on a phased basis to include more women in the prison.

The eligibility criteria for the scheme are now being extended on a phased basis to include more women in prison. There are also many non-custodial alternatives that should be considered by the courts and which I am committed to advancing to ensure that those options are available. One of these is in the legislation I am introducing to increase the maximum number of hours that can be imposed upon the community service order from 240 to 480 hours. That is in the miscellaneous provisions Bill. I will be coming with Committee Stage amendments to that Bill shortly. That will allow for an amendment to oblige the courts to consider a community service order in lieu of a prison sentence of up to 24 months' duration. That will be a positive development. It is a provision that I know, from looking at the probation service and community service orders that operate at present, will be of benefit to those who otherwise may be incarcerated. Every case that results in a community service order will help to free up prison spaces for offenders who genuinely warrant imprisonment.

The Probation Service has been engaging with the Judiciary to encourage the use of community service orders rather than the imposition of sentences of 12 months or less, which is the current threshold, and has provided an increase in funding of approximately 13% for the Probation Service in budget 2026. I also approved the publication of the Probation Service's Community Service: New Directions Implementation Plan 2025-2027. This plan aims to drive the delivery and support the increased use of community service as a robust and meaningful alternative to imprisonment.

I have also indicated that I am committed to introducing electronic tagging for appropriate categories of prisoners. That will mean they will not have to be in prison but can serve their penalty or the sentence imposed upon them out in the community.

Prison staffing is obviously an important issue. Last year, a total of 304 recruit prison officers were recruited by the Irish Prison Service. The pay allocation provided to the Prison Service will allow for the recruitment of up to 100 additional prison officers and up to 50 additional staff, along with a 19% increase in funding to allow for 210,000 additional staff hours. The recruitment programme is proceeding very well.

I also want to increase the facility for there to be remote hearings so that prisoners do not have to be brought from prisons for hearings that are interlocutory or preliminary in nature. Those hearings should be conducted remotely.

I am interested to hear what Senators have to say in respect of this complex matter. I have no doubt they will be critical of the fact that, at present, prisons are at 123% of capacity. I would like them to know that there is no easy solution. One option that could have been considered was what was done in the UK, which was to introduce an across-the-board reduction in sentences. I was asked to consider other options but did not proceed with them, including granting temporary release to sex offenders and cutting, across the board, the length of sentences imposed.

I must also take into account the operation of the criminal justice system. Every day, we see victims who go bravely before the courts, have their cases heard, and a finding of guilt is made for very serious offences against the criminals who have perpetrated violence upon them. There has to be a sanction for those people. If there is not and we are just going to say that we are going to let people out of prison early, it will have a very negative impact on victims and the process of ensuring that people are held to account.

The Minister is welcome back to the House. We in Fianna Fáil very much welcome this important debate. We are acutely aware of the significant capacity pressures across the prison system and the challenges they create for staff, those in custody and the general public. Providing adequate prison capacity is essential for public safety, rehabilitation and the effective functioning of our justice system. That is why I am delighted to hear that the Minister is prioritising investment in the prison estate, with €495 million committed between 2026 and 2030 to deliver over 1,500 additional prison spaces by 2031.

However, as the Minister outlined, increasing capacity alone is not enough. We must also reduce the unnecessary reliance on custodial sentences. For many offences carrying sentences of up to 24 months, community service can often serve both the public interest and rehabilitation goals, particularly during times of overcrowding. I welcome the fact that legislative changes have been introduced to support greater use of community service orders. The Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, which completed Second Stage in January this year, proposes amendments to the community service Act 1983 to support and encourage greater use of community service orders, CSOs. I fully support that legislation. In fact, I have spoken to many people in my own area who have partaken of that scheme and it has put them on a new pathway. It is hugely positive. The Bill includes an amendment to oblige courts to consider a community service order in lieu of a prison sentence of up to 24 months' duration, the current threshold being 12 months, and to give reasons why they consider a CSO should not be imposed in such a case. It will also increase the maximum community service order that a judge may order from 240 hours to 480 hours.

The latest statistics show the cost of housing a prisoner in prison for 12 months is up to €99,000 per annum, which is a huge sum. It is €256 per day to keep someone in prison. It is an alarming figure and one that we must keep in mind.

As the Minister mentioned, there will be investment in the Probation Service for developing electronic monitoring and expanding early release and reintegration programmes, particularly for women. Importantly, we are focusing on prevention. Youth diversion initiatives now being rolled out nationwide aim to break the cycle of offending through early intervention, family supports and community engagements. Through these combined measures and increased capacity, smarter sentencing and early intervention, I am delighted to see that the Department and the Minister are building a safer, fairer and more effective justice system. I wish him well in that continued work.

I am sharing time, if that is in order, with my colleague, Senator Fitzpatrick.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

I thank the Minister for coming to the Seanad and for engaging with us on this important matter. I commend him on the work that he and his Department are doing, the seriousness with which they are treating the issue of inadequate capacity in our prisons and the emphasis they are putting on the increased use of non-custodial sentences. It is all to be commended and I support it.

Prison will always have a place in our justice system. I firmly believe that. The Minister securing €500 million in funding to increase capacity is welcome. However, I also firmly believe that for non-violent, addiction-driven crime, the drugs court, which has been in operation on a pilot basis in Dublin for almost 25 years, offers a real alternative. Prison is not working. Seven in ten people in our prisons identify as having an addiction. Roughly six out of ten reoffend within three years of having been released from prison. Prison is definitely not working. What it is attempting to do is to punish the crime and the behaviour, but it is not addressing the real causes. There are alternatives, and I acknowledge community service and the Minister's commitment to electronic tagging. However, I believe that the drugs court offers a unique response. It is not a replacement for prison, but it is a credible alternative. The drugs court reduces reoffending, where prison often does not. It combines treatment, supervision and real accountability. It creates a situation where there is real responsibility and not avoidance of responsibility.

The drugs court allows prison to be used where it is most effective, which is for those who have committed serious crimes, including violent crimes, but also uses public money more effectively. As Senator Gallagher said, it costs close to €100,000 to keep somebody in prison. It costs less than €10,000 per year to have somebody go through the drugs court. Most importantly, the drugs court saves lives - not just the lives of individuals who have offended but of their families and communities.

The risk of relapse and overdose is highest when people are just released from prison. One element of the drugs court is engagement in treatment - that supervision and support. It is not just a court with lawyers; in fact, there are no lawyers because participants are there on a voluntary basis. The judge deals with the offender and there is the support of the Probation Service, education service and welfare services. It supports the individual to recognise and own their behaviour and to engage on a path of recovery. It is incredibly constructive and I advise anybody who has not been down the drugs court to go down some Wednesday and observe it. It keeps people in supervision, reduces harm, supports recovery and in many cases can prevent death. It is not a soft option; it is demanding. I have seen it in action. Those who fail to engage still face consequences which could involve going to prison.

I firmly believe the drugs court works. The Government needs to take it from a pilot to having it mainstreamed so that not just people who offend in a non-violent way, suffering from an addiction, have access to it in Dublin. It should be made available nationally. If we are to do that, we need to ensure there will be supports throughout the country. That means multi-annual funding for treatment, probation and the courts. I appreciate that the drugs strategy going through from the Department of Health is driven in a health-led way but there is an opportunity now with the new drugs strategy to ensure addiction treatment exists in every region, that regional drugs courts are established across the State and the model is put on a statutory footing. It is a practical evidence-based model we should support. I urge the Minister in considering alternatives to incarceration to put it on a statutory footing and ensure it is properly funded and made available to everyone who needs it.

I welcome the Minister and thank him for his contribution. I agree with nearly everything he said and with Senator Fitzpatrick's contribution. Sending someone to prison should be a last resort. That is a view I have always held at all points - when I was a barrister prosecuting, when I was a Minister and when I was Attorney General. I still hold that view. Mark Kelly, Inspector of Prisons, has reported to the justice committee of these Houses. In February he stated that the circumstances in Cloverhill Prison were degrading conditions due to overcrowding and in Mountjoy they were so bad that they amounted, in his view, to inhuman and degrading treatment banned by the European Convention on Human Rights. I am not saying this to be critical of the Minister because he is fresh to the job but Mr. Kelly has said that unfortunately the situation is continuing to degenerate. Let us be clear about that.

Overcrowding has a long history. It goes back to the circumstances investigated in the Gary Douche commission of inquiry, where a man was killed in a basement room in Mountjoy with, I think, 14 other people in it by a prisoner suffering from a psychotic condition who had been sent there from, I think, Cloverhill, on an exchange programme because he was too unruly in Cloverhill. That report was deeply critical of the decision-making process and of the then Governor of Mountjoy for allowing that situation to arise.

Thornton Hall must be built. There is no way around it. I will explain why. Mountjoy Prison, which the Minister has visited, and I presume Senator Fitzpatrick has done so too, is incapable of providing a prison system which is both deterrent and rehabilitative and functions on a proper basis. It should be demolished. Towards that end, when I was Minister for justice, I acquired an extra acre where Egan's Cash and Carry was on the North Circular Road. There are 14 acres there which are prime development land to rehabilitate the North inner city. The women's prison is massively overcrowded. The situation - let us be honest - is that if somebody goes in, somebody goes out because there is literally no extra space in that institution.

There have been a lot of misconceptions about Thornton Hall. When I was Minister for justice, the Government promised me €30 million to acquire a site for a prison. That was to be financed by the sale of 29 acres at Shanganagh Castle in south Dublin. We got €30 million from private developers and Dún Laoghaire county council. We applied that in a process where we advertised and sought land in north County Dublin which would be available for the process. We nearly secured an 80-acre site but unfortunately that fell through. Eventually, the advertisements led to somebody tendering 150 acres at Thornton Hall which was then zoned as agricultural land. That land at Thornton Hall was the subject of major works and a significant investment. A lot of money was put into developing the access road and carrying out works preparatory to it being used for a new prison. This is very important: it would have accommodated proper psychiatric facilities for prisoners. The Central Mental Hospital simply does not to do that at all. It is not in the business of looking at psychiatrically ill prisoners and dealing with them on a day-to-day basis. It sees itself as having a different function.

In relation to where the future lies, mention was made of drugs in prison. The then Governor of Mountjoy said if there are drugs outside there will be drugs inside. That is not good enough. It was a shameful statement to make because a system like ours should have drug-free areas and mandatory testing for people who want to have a lighter regime to be in a drug-free environment. Instead of that, young people in particular, whether they do or do not have a drug habit or addiction, are shoved into a place where it is almost obligatory to take drugs. It is a shame.

With the population increase, the Minister said, and I agree with him completely, that every possible way of saving people from prison has to explored, be it the drugs court or any reasonable system. At one stage I proposed, and this House enacted, a system whereby people could be fined immediately and told they could serve a sentence if they misbehaved in the following period of time. Unfortunately our Judiciary said that was unconstitutional. I was trying to create a situation where people did not simply get off scot-free but at the same time had something held over them to ensure they would behave in future. A Minister for justice at any time faces disappointments of that kind.

Mountjoy Prison is a 14-acre campus. It could dramatically improve the north inner city if it was developed for housing instead of being used as a prison campus. It is not worth preserving. Whatever people say about its historic characteristics, it should be demolished. No person should be incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison. I pay tribute to successive governors there, not least Eddie Mullins, a recent governor. The inspector pays tribute to them all of recent times. They have courageously fought to improve conditions for prisoners in the pre-Dickensian conditions in that place.

If the population has increased to the extent it has, we also have to bear in mind the sentences and incidence of sentencing for sexual offences, be it rape or historical sexual abuse cases, have dramatically increased. Likewise, the population of people in the criminal cohort, which is usually 25-40, has also increased.

I am not making any racial or other slur of that kind, but there are conditions now in Ireland where our demography is such that we will need extra prison spaces. There is no avoiding it. It seems to me that in those circumstances, we have to get ahead with building Thornton Hall.

If the Leas-Chathaoirleach will give me 20 seconds, I will make one last point about Thornton Hall. It was cancelled due to the crash. It was reinstated in 2010. It is now part of the Government’s programme to do it in 2026. Therefore, 20 years after it was agreed to do it, it is still on the drawing board but is part of official policy. The sooner we face up to the fact that it allows decent prison spaces to be built, with a variety of regimes and with football fields and things like that in it where prisoners can rehabilitate and where there is space for people not to be overcrowded, once we do that, we will bring about a very major improvement. The Irish Penal Reform Trust is right that building prisons is not the answer. I agree with the Minister that it is not the answer in itself. If we pretend, though, that we can carry on in the circumstances condemned by the Inspector of Prisons, so roundly condemned by him, that things can carry on as they are and people can be released into society who are committing very serious offences, public opinion will not stand for it. With that in view, I will make the final point that I support the building of Thornton Hall. It is not politically popular with the trendy left, but it has to be done.

Hear, hear.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire, an Teachta O’Callaghan, as ucht a bheith inár measc tráthnóna inniu chun páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht seo. Is tábhachtach an rud é a bheith ag smaoineamh go rialta ar an gcóras dlí agus cirt atá againn sa tír seo agus conas gur féidir linn feabhas a chur air agus é a athrú don tsochaí i gcoitinne, d’íospartaigh a d’fhulaing mar gheall ar ghníomhartha coiriúla agus, chomh maith leis sin, do chiontóirí, chun seans a thabhairt dóibh éalú ó shaol na coiriúlachta. I welcome this afternoon’s debate on prisons and alternative sentencing options. I welcome the work being done by the Minister, Deputy O’Callaghan, in seeking to improve our Prison Service and the focus on non-custodial sentences and additional funding for community service initiatives and our probation services, as he alluded to in his opening remarks.

I believe that we always need to remain open-minded to the possibilities of systemic change when the changes being proposed are evidence-based and have a proven track record of success in different but comparable jurisdictions. A quick look at the Irish Prison Service website will tell us that today, the majority of Irish prisons have more persons in custody than places available. The cumulative totals for all of our prisons today, as referenced by the Minister, Deputy O’Callaghan, show we have a bed capacity of 4,736 places. However, we have 5,814 people in custody. This equates to 123% of our overall capacity.

The current levels of overcrowding in our prisons are most acutely manifested in our female prisons. Mountjoy female prison currently has 228 women in custody today, exceeding its bed capacity of 146 by 56%. Limerick Prison currently has 91 women in custody, exceeding its capacity of 56 beds by 63%. Today, 548 mattresses are in use on the floors of Irish prisons with some prisoners being faced with the choice of sleeping with their head near their cell door or lying down with their head close to the cell toilet. It is very important that we remember the reason for imposing custodial sentences on criminal offenders is to deny those who have committed crimes their liberty. People in custody within our prisons, however, continue to have human rights and it is crucially important that these rights are respected by all in our criminal justice system.

On Thursday last, I attended some interesting presentations in the audiovisual room organised by our colleague, Senator Aubrey McCarthy. These included presentations from Release, the restorative justice charity, and the Irish Penal Reform Trust. The presentations cited successes of community-based detention systems in countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and Germany. I know that Senator McCarthy does outstanding work in providing supports for people suffering with addiction issues and in helping them on their journeys to recovery. This type of approach seems to be at the centre of the community-based detention model, which it was claimed has significantly lower rates of recidivism and reoffending when compared with our traditional prison sentences.

We must continue to ensure that we have a victim-centred approach to our criminal justice system, which encourages and supports victims to come forward and report crimes. We must also remain open, however, to exploring alternatives to traditional imprisonment, particularly for offenders given short custodial sentences. I welcome the remarks of the Minister, Deputy O’Callaghan, at the beginning of this debate. When evidence supports alternative systems that can clearly demonstrate lower rates of recidivism, better outcomes for prisoners, better outcomes for addiction issues, improved training and better roadmaps towards community involvement and successful reintegration into society, then we must give these alternatives due consideration as the process of improving our criminal justice system for all.

Hear, hear.

As Senator McDowell stated in his contribution, we should look upon the imposition of a prison sentence as a last resort and continue, where possible, to explore alternative ways to deliver justice, including the consideration of the wider use of community-based detention.

I welcome Deputy Grace Boland and her guest, Aoife Marrinan, from Cork, to the Visitors Gallery. I hope she enjoys her visit here today. I call Senator Tully.

I also attended the briefing in the audiovisual room last week hosted by Senator Aubrey McCarthy that included presentations from Release and the Irish Penal Reform Trust. A very compelling case was made for community-based detention. The talk started with a reference to the high numbers and overcrowding situation in our prisons. At the end of last month, 5,909 prisoners were in our prisons. That is 125% of the capacity. The figure has dropped in the past few weeks. As of last Friday, there were 5,776 prisoners. The capacity, though, is still running at 122%, and over 500 of those prisoners are sleeping on floors. As someone said, there are two people in a space the size of a car parking spot. One person is on a mattress on the floor, where they have the choice of sleeping with their head beside the toilet or beside the cell door. They can sleep beside the toilet or beside the door, where they might get bashed if it is opened and they are still asleep. The situation in our women’s prisons is much worse. The Dóchas Centre and Limerick women’s prison are operating at over 150% of capacity.

These figures cannot continue. We have a huge number of prisoners, I do not know the exact number, with mental health issues, intellectual disabilities and autism. I was a member of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters in the last term and we had witnesses in from the Irish Prison Service. They give us the facts and figures. These prisons are not the places to be able to provide the supports these people need. When asked, they said it was most likely that most of those people would not have been in prison had they received the proper supports in the community, whether for a mental health issue or a disability. Having talked to governors, there are waiting lists in prisons for psychologists and for those who require the services of the mental health hospital. Prison is not the place for people with mental health issues.

Last week, we had the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, in this House discussing the mental health Bill that was guillotined. She was lecturing us for not supporting that Bill, when she would not accept any of our amendments to improve it. The Minister of State needs to look at what is happening in society here and the number of people in prison as a result of the failure of the sector for which she is responsible.

We need to ask ourselves what prisons are for. As has been said, we need prisons, obviously, for those who commit very serious crimes and who are a danger to society. They need to be punished but that does not mean those places should be inhumane or that prisoners should be receiving inhumane treatment or should not receive support to rehabilitate.

However, what we have is a conveyer belt of people who are being given short-term sentences for non-violent crime. More than half of the individuals - 57% - who were released from custody during 2019 reoffended within three years. For young adults that was 78%. That is a huge number that could be avoided. Last week, I brought forward a Private Members' motion on investment in youth services, which is what we need to see. We need investment in youth services, youth diversion centres, education and in areas of deprivation. Resource centres work closely with families and provide vital services but they are so underfunded. If it costs the guts of €100,000 to keep a prisoner, we should put that money into areas where families can be supported and, we hope, avoid a lot of those young people becoming involved in crime. I am aware that is not going to solve the overcrowding problem we have now but it could help prevent it happening in future.

People have talked about the drug court, which is an excellent idea and has done excellent work. It was initially established in the north inner city of Dublin and now it extends to the whole county, but could something not be looked at for places far further afield? There are crimes being committed as a result of addiction all over the country. I know many young people who, unfortunately, have become addicted to drugs, committed crimes as a result and who are in and out of prison. They come out but they are not rehabilitated in any way. They are not supported to get into education or employment. A lot of them are homeless and some of them nearly choose to go back into prison because it is a bed for the night and food for a few days. It is just a never-ending circle that does not help anyone. It helps neither the individual nor society and it needs to be looked at.

The European model that was talked about last week in the audiovisual room was very interesting. It is something that is being operated in 22 countries quite successfully. The reoffending rate is only 14%, which is very low, in these countries. It is small-scale, community-integrated houses as an alternative to prison. It is still detention and it is still people being incarcerated but they are given the supports, whether addiction or mental health supports, to get into employment and education and to help them find a stable home. It costs on average €40,000 a year. When it is €40,000 versus €100,000 the argument is already won. Can a pilot programme of even one or two community detention houses be looked at initially? We could see how they operate and work. It could then be extended.

Go raibh maith agat, a Sheanadóir. I welcome Anne-Marie Fahy and her guest to the Chamber. I hope you enjoy your visit. You are in very capable hands.

I understand Senators Harmon and Cosgrove are sharing time.

Yes, four and four.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I welcome this debate. It has been said many times before that the Inspector of Prisons Mark Kelly has described the conditions in our prisons as "inhumane and degrading", which has led to the increase in deaths in custody.

I did my social science dissertation in 1997 on the difficulties within the Irish prison system and very little has changed. There was overcrowding, drug use, too many remand prisoners, not enough community facilities for young people and not enough bail or supervision orders. I do not think it is being trendy left, Senator McDowell. No one denies there is a role for prison, especially with violent and sexual crimes. However, a disproportionate number of prisoners come from disadvantaged backgrounds and areas of socioeconomic disadvantage, low educational attainment and very high unemployment rates. It is very hard to see how continuing to put people into prison due to structural inequalities they did not cause is going to alleviate any of the difficulties we see. There were 31 deaths in prison custody in 2024. That is shameful. It is a scandalously high number. On overcrowding, why continue to incarcerate people and put them in long-term custody when we know the system is overcrowded and stretched beyond limit? It does not make any sense, especially for people who are on remand. There are welcome measures in the civil law Bill to extend community service orders to 24 months and extend community service hours to 480. However, we need to reduce the amount of short-term custodial sentences for non-violent minor offences.

I also argue we need to extend this conversation to look at legalising cannabis for personal use. This is something we cannot keep pushing under the ground. In my time as a youth worker, so many young people I worked with were getting caught up in the criminal justice system for possession of cannabis. It is something we need to start having a proper conversation about instead of kicking it down the road.

We spoke about the bail support scheme for women. This is a pilot programme, which I welcome. We want to see greater urgency on it. As was said, we spent a lot of time debating the Mental Health Bill but there are not enough places in the Central Mental Hospital. Was it last February that there were 340 psychiatric patients being held in prisons across the State? A person who will have no problem with me saying their name, Gearoid Coughlan of Inishannon in County Cork, was in the Central Mental Hospital, got referred to Wheatfield Prison and was on 24-hour suicide watch. Prison is not where he should be. Fortunately, he was moved in the last two weeks.

It is great to have this debate but we need to look at staffing levels in Oberstown as well as bail supervision schemes. I worked with Extern and we know it is keeping juvenile offenders out of Oberstown, but that campus is at critical levels and has critically low staffing levels. That has to be addressed. The terms and conditions of workers employed in Oberstown are something we have to get on top of because it is getting worse. Some of the children in Oberstown are the most vulnerable children in our State and we are failing them utterly by not investing properly in community-based youth facilities and keeping young people out of incarceration.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. This is a very welcome debate and we need to look at prison reform and alternatives. We need to be doing everything we can to keep people out of prison where possible. It is welcome to see more investment and emphasis on probation services as well.

I will talk about a number of issues. First of all, when we talk about prison and people who are in prison, those with a history of addiction and drug use are the norm as opposed to the exception. People who have suffered with addiction are already in prison and this is a doubling-down and an extra prison sentence for them. We cannot have a situation any longer where prisons have to deal with issues we are not dealing with from a public health perspective. We need to improve how we deal with addiction. Ireland has never, in the history of the State, fully dealt with the issue of addiction. We have never had a proper, open, national discussion on addiction. We talk a lot about drugs and that is very important because we need to implement a comprehensive, well-resourced drugs strategy. Many people with addictions are cross-addicted as well. They may have multiple addictions, although it is not always the case. Alcohol is the elephant in the room here and we need to tackle that as a country.

There is a huge disparity between people who have health insurance and those who do not in terms of what rehabilitation they can access and the level and length of treatment. We need to have a national comparative analysis of rehabilitation centres in terms of success rates and how they operate. We need a standardised healthcare approach when we are dealing with the issue of addiction. There is not a family in Ireland not affected in some way by the issue of addiction and there is so much stigma around it that we simply do not talk about it. That is a key area we need to address.

As for overcrowding, Cork Prison is one example among many prisons that are overcrowded. It is frequently operating at about 138% or 139% capacity.

It frequently holds over 400 prisoners when its capacity is 296. Many of the prisoners are sleeping on mattresses. We heard from the Irish Penal Reform Trust as well and we know that many prisoners have limited access to privacy. Many of them share toilets in open spaces and sleep near toilets as well.

There is a complete lack of education in prison. We need to increase the right to education for people who are in prison, as well as the right to more movement. Many prisoners spend more than 16 to 20 hours a day in their cells. That is inhumane. The conditions of some of the prisons in this country are simply inhumane. We absolutely need to deal with this. We need to expand capacity in relation to it. It is welcome that the Minister is looking at this area and at how we can divert people away from prisons and reduce the pressure on the system in terms of overcrowding, as well as having more humane pathways to deal with health issues. We should have the Minister for Health in here as well, because many people in prison are suffering with healthcare issues such as addiction and, of course, mental health, and we need to be talking about that more openly and reducing stigma.

I welcome many of the Minister’s comments today. Some of this stuff I have said before, but I will repeat it. The concept of prison - many people have said today that prison will always have a place in our society. I feel there is something quite defeatist about that in terms of reducing offending to the point that there are no violent crimes. That might seem naive, but my hope for humanity and how we develop as people is that we actually look at the core drivers of those most violent crimes as well so that we are not just accepting them as being something that is going to happen in society and so we will always need prisons. That is not a soft-on-crime approach; it is an approach in which the instances of violent crimes in Ireland are so reduced that we do ourselves out of prison systems. It might seem like pie-in-the-sky thinking but for me, it is about reducing the number of victims who exist in the first place to break the cycles of victimisation.

In 2024, some 77% of new committals were sentenced to less than a year, that is, 77% of people are in prison for crimes so minor they do not warrant a sentence above six to 12 months. Nobody gets intervention in a prison in six to 12 months. A prisoner does not access school or addiction counselling within six to 12 months. We are basically warehousing 77% of people in big buildings across the country and are then saying we have a rehabilitative system when prisoners are literally just warehoused as though in a massive factory that is supposed to do something but nobody knows what. It is so concerning because we have to be able to separate people's individual behaviour that we want to interrupt so they are not offending. However, to separate that from the broader picture and to have a safer society, we have to think beyond the individual behaviour. When we send somebody to prison for a time, it does not actually make society as a whole safer if that is a victim's rights or justice piece. Somebody has committed a crime.

In wider society, imprisonment has never reduced criminality. I have referenced the book by Albert Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine, before. People were literally beheaded on front squares in a public spectacle as a warning not to commit crimes and people still committed crimes. It does not actually reduce offending. How do we actually get to the root causes? I read two books by Professor James Gilligan a couple of years ago. He is a psychologist in some of the most high-security lockdown prisons of violent offenders in the United States. One of his books is called Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous Than Others. It looks at that structural violence piece and under the Democrats and Republicans, over a 100-year period, neither of them when in power reduced the number of violent crimes committed in the country. They slightly reduced under Democrats but not enough for it to be significant.

As for when the level of hard-on-crime rhetoric, sentencing and structural violence goes up, if we look at the violence in America, which has one of the harshest penalty systems in terms of three strikes and you will get a big, long, lengthy sentence, as well as at the number of people in prison in America, it is still one of the most violent places. It has some of the harshest laws when it comes to committing crimes so we see that does not work. What we need to go back to then is looking at the fact that a large portion of people in prisons experience poverty. I know for many of us we will go to the addiction piece but addiction is actually a symptom of poverty. We need to take another step back from addiction and drug use to poverty. Poverty is one of the core drivers. It is not deterministic; it is not just because a person experiences poverty that it is determined he or she will end up in prison but it creates the conditions where he or she is going to encounter particular experiences that may end up with him or her experiencing the criminal justice system. We have to go back and look at the structural inequality that exists in relation to poverty. We have to be able to reduce poverty in a country that, on the one hand is saying it is so wealthy but on the other, inequality is entrenched and deep in certain communities.

Prison has played a funny role in my life my entire life. I must have been only about 12 years of age when I started questioning the concept of prison. If a 12-year-old can start to think about it in this way, it has to be possible for whole governments and society to begin to think about it a different way. I wrote an article about it before based on all the letters I received as a teenager from my friends who had been sent to Oberstown and to St. Pat's, that is, children who were put in an adult institution in St. Pat's and on how they were treated. In all of the letters, there was a common theme. There was this aspiration among these teenage boys that when they got out, they were going to go to Youthreach or to go back to school and get their junior certificate or were going to try to get a job. There were these aspirations. I remember looking at that and asking how does that not materialise when someone actually gets out. It is that agency of an individual trying to correct his or her own individual self with the little agency he or she actually has in an environmental situation. It is the institution versus the agency of an individual. We can talk about the rehabilitation of individuals all we want but if we do not correct the conditions that actually contributed to the offending in the first place, the person goes back out into the exact same conditions and the structural forces of poverty and inequality are so big that it is not going to take very long before his or her individual agency as a person to try to do better is completely consumed by that structural inequality and those barriers and by everything that exists and gets in his or her way of being able to have any sort of power to change his or her individual circumstance. If you had the power to change your individual circumstance, you would not have experienced the amount of poverty, trauma and dropping out of school beforehand, because you would have done it then.

When we look at rehabilitation of an individual, we have to ask what rehabilitation of society looks like. What does rehabilitation of the equality of one's conditions look like and how do we begin to address that? If we do not do that, prison will remain a feature. All the evidence says that violent crime especially is driven by shame, humiliation and not being able to meet one's economic needs. I want to believe in a world where we reduce those violent crimes and reduce having to see the number of victims we see and the loss of life. We do not reduce shame by dehumanising people in prison and having them go to the toilet in front of each other and sleep on mattresses and not be able to access healthcare. We actually compound the shame and increase the chances of somebody becoming more violent. That is the opposite of what we want to achieve.

I am hopeful in looking at the community sanctions system. I would like to look at community courts, broader drug courts and community courts in general. I visited them in New York, in Red Hook and so on and there are some great models. We need to be ambitious. I do not think we should say prison will always be a feature; we should be working very hard to make that not a reality.

Much has been said already about the overcrowding in our prisons, pressure on capacity and how we are to solve it. Alternative sentencing is being put before us a potential solution. I would like to cite one programme we had that could serve as a template. This was the Mountjoy Prison work party, nicknamed the "Pope's prisoner programme". Between 1978 and its suspension in 2009, that work party contributed over 20 community projects, including the construction and renovation of some 30 scout dens and community centres across Dublin. One of the most notable projects was Aurora House in Glencree, renovated by the Mountjoy work party and formally opened in 1979. These were not symbolic gestures but tangible contributions. This initiative also had an employment rate of approximately 80% for participants following release. It was so successful that construction firms at the time would deliberately scout for prisoners to hire. Could you imagine if such a programme existed today and had success rates even close to that? The Government would be broadcasting it from the rooftops and we would never hear the end of it. Most importantly, it shows that where offenders are given structure, responsibility and a pathway back into society, the results can be transformative - not just for them, but for communities and for public safety. It reminds us that alternative sentencing, when properly designed and properly enforced, can work. It can reduce reoffending, restore dignity and turn former offenders into contributors rather than perpetual dependants.

As an extension of this, we also require a shift in how we as a society think about prisoners. Campaigners and researchers have pointed out that, in the late 1970s, prisoners were more commonly viewed as people with potential value to society - people capable of rehabilitation and redemption. That belief, they argue, has disappeared. Too often today, prisoners are only spoken about as problems to be managed rather than people who might one day return as neighbours, workers and parents. That shift in attitude matters because when we stop believing in rehabilitation, we design systems that all but guarantee failure.

There is also scope to think creatively. For non-violent offenders and those serving sentences for less serious crimes, there is a strong case for restoring structured work parties outside prison walls. Properly supervised, such arrangements could relieve pressure on prison capacity while providing skills, discipline and purpose. This is not a radical idea; it has existed before and worked.

However - and this is critical - reform cannot be a carrot and no stick. Alternative sentencing must come with very clear, very tough consequences for those who fail to honour its conditions. Anyone who abuses or manipulates such schemes must face swift and serious sanctions. Without that, public confidence collapses, and deservedly so.

Likewise, alternative sentencing must never be allowed to become a pressure release valve for a system in crisis. It cannot be used as a substitute for dealing with the underlying failures of our prison infrastructure. The only acceptable release valve for our prison system is the resolution of its crisis, and that means building Thornton Hall. For far too long, this project has been delayed, deferred and quietly sidelined. We cannot keep pretending that overcrowding will solve itself through goodwill and pilot programmes. There is an opportunity here to join principle with practicality. Properly managed prison work parties could be used to contribute to the construction of Thornton Hall itself, giving prisoners skills and purpose while directly addressing the capacity crisis. This is how reform should work - demanding, constructive and rooted in responsibility.

Prison reform and alternative sentencing should not amount to being soft on crime. It must be serious about outcomes. It is about reducing reoffending and protecting the public. While we should continue to work on ways to see that sentences are corrective and rehabilitative, let us never lose sight of the fact that, at the end of the day, there have to be tough consequences for breaking the law. At the moment, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. The prisons are overcrowded, the convicted are left off with light or suspended sentences and, hence, we have more crime, as the criminals feel that they can get away with a slap on the wrist, and it all just continues. If we can combine discipline with opportunity, consequences with rehabilitation and reform with firm boundaries, then we can build a justice system that is not only humane, but effective.

I thank the Minister for being here and giving myself and my colleagues time to have statements on prison conditions and alternative sentencing. I do not come from a legal background. I am on the justice committee. I attended Limerick Prison with Senator Ruane and that opened my eyes to what the conditions were like. It was my first time ever to visit a prison and it has had a lasting impact on me. We talk about the dignity of people if we want to help with rehabilitation and reform, but what I saw there that day was reflective of the contributions here today. I genuinely believe that the Minister's prison system is actually a gatekeeper for public health where we have failed within public health. I do not say it is true for all, but for a portion. That portion of people may never, for example, have been diagnosed with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, FASD. These people go from flight to fight. They are the teenagers who drop out of school. They are the teenagers who then may not participate in Youthreach. They have turned 18 and all of a sudden they are in the judicial system without ever having known their condition. I say exactly the same about Huntington's disease. This is another classic example of a neurological disease that does not manifest itself until people hit their late teens and early adulthood, but its sufferers present an awful lot in relation to crime, particularly minor crime that escalates, while never having got that understanding. There are a number of combinations here. We also have people who have had reduced education hours or reduced time in education. These reduced hours within classroom settings are going to cause damage in time to come. Whether they are in special classes or special units, at the end of the day and unless we have proper intervention, supports and an understanding of what a person's condition is, it will manifest and present. Sometimes, the decision will then be made that the best place to manage - that is the word used - that person due to how they are presenting is within the judicial system.

I believe in the rehabilitation of and working with individuals. We have not really explored what rehabilitation would look like outside the prison system. I really welcome the amending of legislation on community service orders from 240 to 480 hours so that people get the opportunity to get back into education and acquire hope while also understanding whatever the condition that presents in them is and how they can live within a community setting completely.

Senator Ruane has spoken about parts of the US. I know from the research that I am doing that they have gone further in the US with young offenders than what we have in the youth diversion programme. They give people the opportunity to participate in community service but also within rehabilitation. What has come out of a number of the studies that have been done is that, where people have been given the opportunity to participate in rehabilitation, there has been a 96% take-up and it has ensured that the numbers reoffending have dropped.

There are great opportunities, and I believe the Minister is the Minister to effect this sort of change. Prison has to be there for people who do wrong, but for people who have never had the opportunity to understand what has been their underlying condition, we need to afford them that opportunity and invest in that. I agree with Senator Harmon on education within the Prison Service. We need to really look at what we are delivering as a form of education within prison. We need to look at what people are stepping back out to. Are they stepping back out into employment? Are they equipped to participate in employment? Are there really good apprenticeship models there? In Limerick Prison, a lot of people were participating in work there but were finding it very difficult to get into employment.

We need to partner with industry as well in order that there will be a step-out model and that it will not just be confined to training. Training is one thing, but it is really about breaking away from the poverty element when people step back out.

That is my two and six, as they say. I do not have a legal background, but I genuinely want to ensure that we can make a difference here.

I thank the Minister for coming to the House. Initially, I asked for this debate on the basis of the follow-up inspection report relating Mountjoy Prison for the period 28 April to 2 May 2025. I want to reference that here, because it is important. The inspection report was laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in last month. As a result, we have been given the opportunity to raise it in this House. I am not going to go into the litany of abuses that have been set out or the photographic evidence contained in the full report. I thank the Minister for coming in here to listen to the debate. I acknowledge and thank Mr. Mark Kelly, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, who drew up the report and made arrangements for it to be laid before the Houses. I refer to the follow-up inspection report specific to Mountjoy, copies of which Members have in front of them.

I also acknowledge the importance of the excellent public service broadcasting of Conor Ryan and the "RTÉ Investigates" documentary shown on 9 and 10 February 2026, which was also raised by me in this House and which exposed the failures of Ireland's mental health system. The RTÉ programme - I am sure the Minister may have seen it - highlights how people in urgent need of psychiatric care are often placed in prison cells rather than receiving the appropriate hospital and community mental health-based care they deserve. We know of cases involving people dying in custody after being turned away from mental health services. This demonstrates that there is an urgent need for practical and alternative systemic reforms.

I acknowledge my colleague Senator Ruane, who has really been a powerful and strong advocate in this space and who has brought a lot of her knowledge and understanding to the proceedings of this House. She is not here now, but I want to put on record my thanks to her in that regard. It is also important to acknowledge the Irish Penal Reform Trust, under executive director Saoirse Brady, which continues to advocate for a more just, humane and effective criminal justice system. Its work is always based on research, advocacy and engagement, which is important to note.

The Minister will be aware that following the publication of the reports by the chief inspector of prisons on 15 January, the a press release was issued by the Irish Penal Reform Trust, IPRT. The five reports from the Office of the Inspector of Prisons were based on inspections carried out in Mountjoy Prison, the training unit at Mountjoy, Cork prison, Cloverhill Prison and the Dóchas Centre between 2022 and 2023. They revealed widespread issues, including poor conditions, mistreatment of prisoners and the overuse of restrictive regimes and solitary confinement. Significant failures were identified in accountability, record-keeping and complaints systems. The IPRT also highlighted unacceptable sanitary conditions, which colleagues will see in the report in front of them, and the lack of access to basic necessities. I am deeply concerned about these practices, particularly those in the Dóchas centre. The reports that have come from there are seriously disturbing and include mention of a restrictive lock-back regime. That clearly is unacceptable. We must have a basic level of human rights, as I think the Minister will agree. I know he has set out the difficulties and I understand some of them.

Many of the issues identified remain ongoing and, in some cases, have worsened or escalated since the report was published. I refer in particular to overcrowding. There is a need for urgent action, including measures to improve conditions for prisoners and the need to strengthen independent oversight to ensure the detention conditions meet basic standards of what are basic requirements, dignity and human rights.

I wish also to acknowledge the significant and important work of the Jesuit Centre of Faith and Justice in Ireland, which engages in regular commentary on penal reform and social justice. I also acknowledge the significant work of the prison chaplaincy service, which has a very good and strong engagement role and is respected, too, as a unique contact and access for people held in detention in our prison service.

I thank the Minister for his time and for responding to the invitation to come here, which was extended some weeks ago. I am particularly pleased, as always, that the lead Minister is coming to engage with us.

Hear, hear.

On behalf of all Senators, I can say that we greatly respect that hands-on approach and the direct contact with us.

I echo Senator Boyhan's commendation of the Minister regarding his coming before the House. Lots of Ministers send in junior Ministers. While they have a very important role to play, it is great to engage with the senior Minister. I thank Senator Boyhan for proposing that we have this debate. The situation in Irish prisons is completely unacceptable, as I think the Minister agrees. There are two ways of dealing with it. The obvious one is capacity. We have a growing population, so we are clearly going to have a growing prison population as well. Sadly, it does go hand in hand that the more people we have, the more likely it is that there is going to be a requirement for additional prison spaces. I think we are dealing with that with an extra €60 million or €70 million this year. Perhaps it is not at the level we would like, but I am aware of the Minister's commitment to this. I would absolutely support him in any calls he makes for additional funding to deal with it, particularly in the in the context of women's prisons and the incarceration of women. The situation in Limerick is particularly troubling. I echo Senator Rabbitte's comments. An excellent female prison is now part of the campus in Limerick. Unfortunately, however, it is way overcrowded. That is only opened a couple of years so clearly there is an urgent need to address this issue.

Back in March 2013 in this House, I tabled a Private Member's motion on restorative justice. I was Fine Gael spokesperson on justice at the time. I did it on the basis of a very successful pilot programme in south County Dublin, in the Tallaght area, and in the Nenagh area of north Tipperary. Restorative justice practices were piloted in these areas. It showed clear evidence that there was a 70% reduction in people reoffending. When the restorative practices were engaged with and it was done in a structured and professional way, it clearly resulted in a drop in crime. When a young fellow robs a handbag from a lady and does not realise the devastating impact that has on that person's life, when they do eventually come face to face under proper structures, and that chap understands the impact it has had, it does lead to a reduction in reoffending. It is proven the world over that restorative practices work.

Furthermore, in February 2014 I tabled a Private Member's motion in this Chamber on the need for Dublin to look at a community court similar to the community court in Times Square in New York, which completely reduced the crime levels there. It was kind of a one-stop shop in terms of addiction services, courts services, financial supports, advice and so on. Again, the Senators who where here at the time supported the motion unanimously. It was a different time and there was financial difficulty in the country, so the resources were not there but the policy was accepted as a good policy. The concept of a pilot community court in Dublin was supported at the time by the Minister. Unfortunately, it has not happened. Twelve years later, there has not been a pilot. The Courts Service does great work and the addiction services do great work, as do the homeless and housing services. However, they could be knitted together in a one-stop-shop scenario in circumstances where some of the justice issues are clearly health issues and should not really be categorised as relating to the area of justice. We have had the debate on many occasions regarding instances where people are found guilty of drug possession and so on and that this should be looked at as a health issue in the first instance.

I think Governments are very much coming around to that school of thought. The justice committee at the time did some very good work both on restorative justice and on the concept of community courts. I want to put it to the Minister that maybe it is an appropriate time to look at a community court in Dublin city and at expanding nationally the very successful pilot programme on restorative justice that was rolled out in south Dublin and Tipperary, as was agreed unanimously by the Members of this House back in 2013 and 2014.

Ar dtús ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis eis na Seanadóirí as a gcuid óráidí ar an gceist seo, ceist atá fíorthábhachtach ar fad.

I thank the Senators for their contributions on this important and challenging debate. I suppose we were discussing two issues here. First is the appropriateness of a court imposing a custodial sentence of prison on a person. Second, if that happens, is the conditions in the prison. There are complex issues. I will deal with the first at the outset and then try to respond to each of the issues identified by Senators.

When it comes to the appropriateness of a court imposing a custodial sentence in prison, one of the factors a court has to take into account, and that we as legislators do when drafting criminal justice legislation, is the fact that for the purpose of a punishment, punishment and rehabilitation have to be taken into account. That is the purpose of prison. Prison is about punishment but it is also about rehabilitation. In that context, I want to say, having visited seven or eight prisons since I have been Minister, that there is a lot of good work being done in our prisons. To read the reports of the inspector and to listen to the debates about the legitimate concerns people have about conditions in prisons, I know that you do not hear much about the good work that is being done there, but there is a lot of very good work being done in prisons. I am aware from speaking to prisoners in prison, particularly those who have received lengthy sentences, that very many of them do manage to get their lives back on track and are aspirational, as Senator Ruane said, in terms of getting out of prison and getting on with their lives. Regrettably, it is the case that the individuals who end up incarcerated in prison for lengthy sentences are to a large extent men between the ages of 18 and 35 years. I know from functions I have as Minister that when people are released on temporary release, particularly people who have life sentences, there is not much recidivism when it comes to people who have received long life sentences. A statistic was mentioned earlier, which was correct, about short-term sentences where there was recidivism. That really is because of the chaotic lives lived by people who end up before our courts.

I do not make this point to be in any way critical of Senators, but in terms of immediate fixes to the problem of overcrowding in our prisons, there is no immediate solution to that. No one has suggested here that I should do what the UK Government did previously, which was just to introduce legislation that would cut all sentences by a third across the board. Nobody has suggested that very elderly men who are in prison for historical sex offences should no longer remain in prison and that there should be some mechanism of releasing them, taking into account that, at present, they do not form a threat. We need to recognise that there is a complexity to these debates. I was in a debate in the Lower House where there were complaints about the fact that sentences imposed by a court had either been too low a custodial sentence or a suspended sentence. There needs to be some recognition that the whole process of sentencing is a complex process and it will require, in many instances, the imposition of a custodial sentence.

I want to thank the Senators for their contributions. I will not go through them all individually because I will not finish them all in the time I have. Many colleagues mentioned addiction. Obviously, there is an issue in terms of people who are sentenced to prison with addiction issues. The reason they are sentenced is not because of their addiction issues, but because they have committed a criminal offence. The criminal offence may have been induced because of their addiction but the reason they were put in prison was because they committed a criminal offence. It is now the case that people in custody have access to a growing range of medical and rehabilitative services to support their rehabilitation, reduce offending and assist with reintegration into society. These include methadone substitution treatment, counselling, psychological intervention, peer-to-peer support programmes, psychological education and the treatment and rehabilitation programme provided by Merchant’s Quay Ireland. It is sometimes the case that part of the reason a court will impose a short custodial sentence on a person who has addiction issues is because the court may believe that the only way that they can get treatment for their addiction is in prison because their chaotic lives and how they will not voluntarily attend treatment mean it is the only way it can be imposed upon them.

The drug treatment court was mentioned by a number of Senators. In 2024, the Centre for Justice Innovation was commissioned by my Department to carry out an evaluation of the drug treatment court. The final report was received by my Department at the end of last year. It was shared with a number of the key stakeholders and the final report was received in February 2026. It is currently under consideration. I expect to receive this report in the very near future.

A number of Senators also mentioned building further capacity. As I said at the outset, I think it is necessary to build further capacity irrespective of what people’s general view about whether people should be incarcerated more or less under our system. There is no reason that the prison system that we operate at present cannot provide treatment for people who have addiction, as I said, and also there is education that goes on. Senator Harmon indicated that there was very little education in prisons. I know from my own visits that there are education services provided there and there are mechanisms available to people in prison to assist them in getting their lives back on track.

Other Senators mentioned the restorative justice programme. I think it was proposed by Senator McCarthy. That is something I will certainly give consideration to. There are situations where there are small detention houses. We are aware of this model and the Department has visited them in Belgium. There are merits to this approach. It is something to bear in mind as part of the solutions.

Two of the prisons that are very effective and very impressive are our open prisons, one in Shelton Abbey and one in Loughan House. I visited both of them. Shelton Abbey has its own unique mobile home-type unit where prisoners stay and it seems to work very effectively. I think there is a greater role for open prisons. Those prisons are also very effective in preparing people for getting back into the community. I commended the people in Shelton Abbey, the prison staff there, but also the local community and the businesses in the locality that engage the services of prisoners and, once the prisoners are released, want to keep them on. It is important that we provide prisoners with an opportunity to be aware that there is an employment pathway for them once they leave.

People with mental health difficulties are obviously a very complex issue. Again, the reason people are incarcerated is because, notwithstanding their mental health, they have committed serious offences. There are sometimes individuals who are found not guilty of offences but still have to be detained because of their mental health. I have also visited the National Forensic Mental Health Service, the new hospital in Portrane. It is a wonderful facility. It is a vast improvement on what was there previously at Dundrum.

On where we go with the prison system in Ireland, I think the justice committee should keep visiting prisons throughout the country.

I am pleased people went to Limerick Prison. I have to say Limerick women's prison is one of the finest infrastructural developments that the State has done in recent years. The statistics make it look significant in terms of overcrowding but the rooms where women stay are much larger than the cells represented in the Mountjoy Prison report to which Senator Boyhan referred. I would never like to think of the State warehousing people. This is not something that is being done. We have an obligation when people are incarcerated not just to punish them but to ensure we can rehabilitate them. That is a very important part of my job.

I welcome Deputy Noel McCarthy and his visitors from Cork to the Gallery. They are very welcome and I hope they enjoy their visit to Leinster House.