Reduced jail places if reforms not accepted - McDowell

The number of jail places will be reduced from January 1st, 2004, if prison officers do not accept a reform plan put forward, the Minister for Justice Mr McDowell said this evening.

Outlining dramatic changes to the operation of the prison system, Mr McDowell said the amount available for prison officers' overtime would be reduced by €30 million from January 1st, 2004.

Speaking on RTE radio Mr McDowell said: "From this evening, every prison governor is being asked to work out how to run their prison on dramatically reduced overtime." He denied there was any danger in reducing the number of overtime hours because the State has a "hugely overmanned system".

Mr McDowell said he had presented a proposal to prison officers which would see them receive an annual payment of €10,000 per annum in return for agreeing to be available for an additional 360 hours work per annum.

If this proposal was accepted, the Minister said Spike Island in Cork, and the Curragh Place of Detention in Kildare would remain open.

However, if the prison officers continued to refuse this deal, Mr McDowell said he would "mothball" these two facilities and prisoners from these jails would be redistributed between Cork, Limerick, and Dublin. This would reduce the number of available prison places.

"On the first of January of 2004 the talking ends and the scandal ends", Mr McDowell said referring to the annual prison overtime bill of €64 million.

"It is a matter of the prisoners' welfare. I need the money to stop people having to slop out in chamber pot 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 cannabalised 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", said Mr McDowell.

The Minister is also proposing to turn Loughan House and Shelton Abbey into pre-release facilities staffed by care staff, not prison officers.

Mr McDowell is also planning to outsource the prison escort service in order to further reduce the overtime bill.

The Prison Officers' Association has described Mr McDowell's plan as provocative, irrational and "absolutely absurd".

The deputy general secretary of the POA, Mr Eugene Dennehy, said: ""People are being led to believe that this is about cutting overtime costs but the fact is that the ministers are working to an alternative agenda and trying to blame the prison officers".