Officers protest over prison closures

Prison officers and their families yesterday marched on the Dáil in protest at the closure of two of the State's prisons which they say is taking a "devastating" toll on their lives.

Officers formerly employed at the now mothballed Curragh Place of Detention, Co Kildare, and Spike Island, Co Cork, have been transferred to the Midlands Prison and Limerick Prison respectively.

The Prison Officers' Association (POA) claims some of these officers are being forced to travel 100 miles each way to their new places of work and that this is having a very detrimental impact on their home lives.

About 100 prison officers and their families travelled to Dublin yesterday and staged a protest outside Leinster House.

They were calling on Minister for Justice Michael McDowell to reopen the Curragh and Spike Island prisons and to go back into talks with the POA with a view to reaching agreement on the current overtime dispute across the prison service.

Ms Mary Keevans, a nurse officer transferred last year from the Curragh to the Midlands Prison, Portlaoise, said the three- hour round trip to work was seriously affecting her home life.

The mother of three accused Mr McDowell of "completely overlooking" the impact on prison officers' home lives that the closure of the two prisons has had.

"I have to drive so far to work that during the winter I'm leaving in the morning in the dark and getting home in the dark. It's not fair on my children. They are in three different schools in Celbridge where I live so it won't be a case of us relocating easily to wherever I might find myself working in the future when the dispute is eventually sorted out."

Mr Dermot Horan, a prison officer transferred from Spike Island to Limerick Prison, said some of his colleagues living in west Cork were now driving more than 100 miles to and from their new places of work. This was unsustainable.

"A lot of us worked in prisons in Dublin for a good few years and then sought transfers back to prisons near our home towns. Lots of my colleagues have built houses in parts of Cork close to Spike Island but now they are working in Limerick and have no guarantee where they are going to end up".

He said some would be forced to leave the prison service and urged Mr McDowell to listen to measures formulated by the POA aimed at resolving the current dispute. Under the pay offer already rejected by the POA, prison officers would have earned a salary of between €48,000 and €70,000 in exchange for working an average of seven hours overtime each per week. They would also have been paid a once-off payment of €13,750.