It would be impossible to ever truly or fully quantify the good that the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas (Icpo) has done, President Mary McAleese said today.
She was speaking at a conference in Dublin held to mark the 25th anniversary of the council, which was set up by Ireland’s Catholic bishops in 1985.
The council provides information to prisoners on issues such as repatriation and deportation, and assists in making referrals to post-release support agencies for those returning to Ireland in need of such support. It lobbies prison authorities, State officials and others on the needs of its clients whether they are of a legal, medical, educational or practical nature.
“I think today of Anne Maguire stepping into then prime minister Tony Blair’s office to receive a public apology for the wrong that robbed her, her husband and family of precious years of family life,” the President said. “It was thanks to Icpo’s insistent advocacy among others that the truth eventually emerged.
“What is more, the awful injustice visited upon the Maguire family, the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, which the council championed when it was singularly unpopular to do so, should teach us something about the potential for human frailty and fallibility of processes, particularly where they are under enormous pressure,” she said.
Mrs McAleese, who is a founding member of the council, said there are about 1,000 Irish men and women in prisons abroad at any given time. “None of us would argue that if they have broken the law they have to go through the criminal processes and pay the penalty, but those processes and that penalty are seriously aggravated if you are in prison in a strange country or culture, isolated from family and friends.”
The Bishop of Derry and chair of the Catholic Bishops’ Council for Emigrants Most Rev Seamus Hegarty told the conference that having a loved one imprisoned in a foreign country “can be a very frightening and traumatic experience”.
The Bishop of Elphin and chair of the Bishops’ Commission for Pastoral Care Most Rev Christopher Jones said there had to be a better way than prison to punish crime, grant justice to victims and create safer societies.