Madam, - As a serving prison officer of 18 years, I am compelled to respond to your editorial (October 30th) in which you stated "Prison officers were determined to retain their enviable position as world leaders in terms of staffing levels and pay."
This issue was never about money. Prison officers have always been against overtime, and the figures for non attendance for compulsory overtime bear testimony to this. In fact, if we turned up for all the overtime, that management wanted us to, then the bill would be closer to €100 million and not the estimated €64 million.
The serving prison officer is in reality a victim of decades of mismanagement, and the antiquated judicial system, which at times has had convicted armed robbers escorted from one end of the country to the other to appear before a District Court judge for some misdemeanor, where a nominal fine is normally the penalty. This ridiculous, and very costly occurence, is all too common, but for some unknown reason, Minister McDowell seems totally unprepared to address anything that might impinge upon the livelihood of the legal profession.
Yes, we have issues about staffing levels. Health and safety issues! We deal on a day to day basis with society's most violent and dangerous people. People who are deemed too violent and too dangerous to walk the streets of this land.
Of course, we are concerned that we have enough staff to control these volatile people and ensure the safety of staff, which recent events have proven, are barely adequate as it stands. There are certain minimum staffing levels required to safely run the nations institutions, and no, we are not willing to jeopardise staff safety by agreeing to lower these levels.
The European trend is to a shorter working week, but Minister McDowell wants our working week to get longer and longer, and is totally contradictory to "family friendly policies", which are actively encouraged these days. The fact that there is zero predictability of these proposed annualised hours attendance makes a complete mockery of the whole process.
Common ground can be reached but there has to be a realistic proposal that will address the genuine concerns of staff and their families.
Your editorial was straight off Minister McDowell's hymn sheet, and asks serious questions about unbiased and equitable journalism. Demonising the staff side at this time is both extremely unfair and unhelpful. - Yours etc,
LIAM H WARNER, Fort Mitchel, Spike Island, Co Cork.