The Minister for Justice has cranked up the pressure on prison officers to agree to reduce their €60-million overtime bill, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent
When the Prison Officers' Association returns to the Labour Relations Commission on January 12th next, there will be just one week left before the prison closures announced by the Minister for Justice Mr McDowell begin, according to the timetable he set yesterday.
The Curragh detention centre is due to close on January 19th, he says. This will be followed on January 31st by Spike Island. On February 14th prison staff will leave Shelton Abbey prison, allowing it to become a pre-release hostel run by non-prison service staff. On February 28th Loughan House is due to follow suit.
On those dates the staff currently working at these institutions will be transferred to the state's remaining 12 prisons, thus reducing the high overtime payments. Meanwhile, the process whereby private companies tender to be allowed run the prison escort service will be well underway. The issuing of a timetable for these changes yesterday is the clearest signal yet that Mr McDowell is determined to end what he has called the "scandal" of the prison service overtime bill. The payment of large overtime earnings to prison officers has been a central feature of the prison service for many years. Ministers and officials have routinely acknowledged the system is unacceptable. Mr McDowell has now shown singular determination to change it.
Prison officers earn, on average, more than €19,000 in overtime per year, much more than any other group within the public sector. Some officers are earning far in excess of that figure. Much of the overtime is compulsory, with some officers working up to 70 hours a week and earning more than a prison governor. On average, prison officers earned €1,105 per week in the 12 months to March 2002, according to data from the Central Statistics Office. This figure comprises an average of €734 in basic pay and €371 in overtime every week.
The overtime situation has been described as a crisis for many years. On his appointment in 1999, the first head of the new Prison Service Mr Seán Aylward described the practice of prison officers earning excessive overtime as "a cancer in the system, stifling creativity and innovation".
The same year the then Minister for Justice Mr O'Donoghue said he would cut the prison overtime bill from €40 million to €28 million. Instead it rose to some €64 million last year.
Prison management has long resented the strength of the POA and that organisation's apparent ability to insist on the retention of the extremely costly overtime system. In 1998, before the establishment of the Prison Service, prison governors wrote to the Government saying the POA had "absolute control" over the prison service, and complained about excessive sick leave and absenteeism.
Last April prison officers staged a walkout at their annual conference while Mr McDowell was addressing them on the issue. That month the Minister had imposed a three-month deadline for agreement, after which he said he would go ahead with plans to close two prisons, remove two more from prison service management and privatize the prison escort service. Last October he imposed another ten-day deadline. In November he obtained Cabinet approval for the measures he was proposing. His aim is to cut €30 million from last year's €64 million overtime bill.
The POA claims it has put forward its own plan that would save €30 million. Mr McDowell said the POA had made a "wholly unrealistic" proposal for either major pay increases or the recruitment of 1,200 extra prison officers. Last year prison officers voted to reject the Minister's proposals by over 99 to one.
Mr McDowell's statement yesterday expressed no optimism that a deal can be agreed. Army personnel meanwhile have already been inside the prisons, assessing the level of resources that would be required for them to run the state's penal institutions should the situation escalate into a full industrial dispute.
The Minister has sought to pitch this issue as being more than an industrial conflict between the Government and a group of public sector workers. He suggested in November that there was, in fact, a direct trade-off between overtime payments for prison officers and funding to improve prison conditions.
"It is a matter of the prisoners' welfare", he said. "I need the money to stop people having to slop out in chamber pots every morning. I need the money to transform Mountjoy from a medieval prison into a modern prison, on that location or somewhere else. All that capital money is being cannibalised every year to pay for this outrageous, immoral, unsustainable and non-continuable demand for the prison officers that we are going to have €60 million overtime every year."