CRIMINALS IN a number of prisons including Mountjoy and Limerick jails may be able to continue using smuggled mobile phones in their cells despite the roll-out of technology that will block the signal needed to operate them, it has emerged.
Director general of the Irish Prison Service Brian Purcell has revealed the walls of some of the State’s oldest prisons are so thick they effectively render the new technology useless. He told a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the thick walls “make it difficult to achieve blockage at a cost you can afford”.
Mr Purcell told PAC members that talks with the preferred bidder for the construction of the new super-prison at Thornton Hall had stalled and a contract may not be signed until the end of the year.
The construction consortium’s efforts to raise the money needed for the project had been frustrated by the recession. Some €41 million had already been spent by the State on the prison site and preparatory works.
Department of Justice secretary general Seán Aylward was asked by PAC member Niall Collins TD (FF) why serious criminals who clearly had significant means were being granted free legal aid.
Mr Aylward said the entitlement to free legal aid was judged on a person’s ability to pay for their own defence with legitimate earnings. If criminals were allowed to use drug money they could hire very significant legal representatives. Lawyers defending criminals would be expected to take “tainted” money as payment.
This situation could not be permitted because the State’s priority was to seize the proceeds of crime.
Mr Aylward expressed veiled criticism of members of the legal profession who represented failed asylum seekers. He said applications for judicial review were left “to the last minute” and challenges to deportations delayed until the intended deportee was taken “to the steps of the plane”.
“It’s legal ambush,” he said.
The earnings from such activities were increasing for the “large, growing legal community”.
Some 400 gardaí, mostly of detective rank, were now employed to police the immigration system. The State’s handling of all asylum seekers had cost more than €2 billion to date.
Mr Aylward said of almost 81,000 people who had applied for asylum here since 1992, about 9,000 had been granted refugee status. Some 3,269 failed asylum seekers had been deported.
While many of the estimated 69,000 other failed asylum seekers had likely left the State, it was difficult to be sure of this. “When people leave the country covertly you can’t check that, you can’t prove a negative,” Mr Aylward said. He could not estimate how many illegal immigrants were in the Republic at present.
