Members of Parole Board are announced

The members of the new Parole Board were announced by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, yesterday.

The board will operate at first on an administrative basis and will replace the Sentence Review Group. It will review the cases of long-term prisoners (excluding cases of capital murder) after seven years have been served.

Following such reviews it will make recommendations to the Minister.

It will be advisory in nature and any final decision will rest with the Minister.

The board will be chaired by Mr Gordon Holmes, of Holmes O'Malley Sexton Solicitors (Limerick). The other members will be: Ms Lillian McGovern, chief executive of Victim Support; Ms Daisy O'Reilly, member of the board of management of Harristown House, Castlerea; Mr Tom O'Donoghue, project manager of the Kerry Diocesan Youth Service Project; Mr Martin Tansey, principal probation and welfare officer with the Probation and Welfare Service; Dr Charles Smith, director of the Central Mental Hospital; Ms Anne O'Gorman, principal officer of the prisons and probation welfare policy division at the Department of Justice; Mr John Kenny of the Irish Prisons Service and Mr Frank McCarthy of Cork Prison.

The board is expected to be operational in the coming months. Its premises will be outside the Department and Prisons Service locations. Civil servants will gradually be seconded to form its secretariat.

Mr O'Donoghue said the board was being established to promote effective sentence management, community safety and efforts towards the rehabilitation and resettlement of offenders.

Other initiatives he said had been taken as part of this approach include the establishment of an independent Prisons Authority, the publication of a Sex Offenders Bill and the publication of the Criminal Justice (Temporary Release of Prisoners) Bill, which "will set out a clear legislative basis for the Minister's power to grant temporary release".