MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern has disputed suggestions that he or the Irish Prison Service is massaging inmate numbers to conceal the full extent of prison overcrowding or the true number of inmates on temporary release.
He said the system of granting immediate release to some defaulters on fines when they arrive at prisons from the courts has not been changed for decades.
His comments followed allegations of dishonesty on the issue from Fine Gael’s spokesman on justice Alan Shatter TD.
Mr Shatter said jailed fine-defaulters were being freed on arrival at prisons because jails were full, they were no longer being classified as being on temporary release and were no longer being included in prison population figures.
The new system was being used to “fiddle the figures” and to conceal the extent of the overcrowding problem and the growing number of inmates being granted temporary release, he said.
Prison sources have told The Irish Timesthat a new directive had been sent in recent months from the Irish Prison Service to every prison in the Republic.
The sources said it set out that jailed fine-defaulters should be freed on arrival at jail and not included in the temporary release figures. Until recently, freed-on-arrival fine-defaulters were almost always recorded as being on temporary release. Inmates on temporary release, which is used to relieve overcrowding, has fallen from 938 in June to 651 at present.
Mr Ahern has said no new instruction had been sent by him or anybody in the justice system with the aim of reducing or massaging prison population or temporary release numbers.
He said a circular had been sent to jails recently reiterating that fine-defaulters released on, or shortly after, arrival at prisons, enjoyed unconditional release as opposed to temporary release.
When the Fines Act comes into operation in January allowing people to pay fines in instalments, the practice of jailing some fine-defaulters would be resolved.