THE BRITISH government wants more Irish prisoners serving sentences in Britain to be transferred to the Republic to finish their terms, British prime minister David Cameron has said.
Just 14 have been sent back to the Republic this year under the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, which requires both countries concerned and the prisoner to agree to the move.
Justice secretary Ken Clarke has vowed to cut 3,000 from the 85,000 prisoners currently held in British jails – 11,000 of whom are foreigners – under a plan which requires the closure of six prisons spread throughout Britain.
In the House of Commons, Conservative MP Philip Hollobone asked Mr Cameron: “Given that we are about to lend them more than £7 billion [€8.3 billion], could the Irish Republic be persuaded to pay for the incarceration of these people by taking them back to jails in their own country?”
Mr Cameron said: “You make an extremely good point. We are looking at how you can transfer prisoners, foreign nationals, from the UK to other countries. Obviously with Ireland, the situation is slightly different because of the long relationship between our two countries.
“The previous government announced that it would not routinely support the deportation of Irish nationals from the UK. This was announced in February 2007.
“Since then there has been a European directive which is actually helpful because it makes more automatic the removal of prisoners to other countries.
“But there is still this specific issue with Ireland and I am going to ask the justice secretary to look at it and see if we can do a little better,” he continued.
Last night, the ministry of justice said it intended to have discussions with the Department of Justice in Dublin on the matter.
“There is no guarantee about this, but it is something that we are working on. It is something that we want to do, so the aspiration is there. There are existing contacts on this,” a ministry spokesman told The Irish Times.
A European Union prisoner transfer agreement, which comes into force next year, will not require the consent of the prisoner and could enable the return of many more people to EU countries.
In the past, the British were criticised for refusing to heed calls to send Irish prisoners – many from the republican movement – to Irish jails. The situation is complicated in the case of many of the 1,000 or so Irish held in Britain because they and their families have lived there for decades.
