The contract to build a controversial new prison at the 150-acre Thornton Hall in north county Dublin is expected to be awarded by March of next year, with construction due to start in April 2007, according to the Department of Justice.
This follows the announcement yesterday that four companies have been shortlisted to build the new facility, which is intended as a replacement for Mountjoy prison. It will hold at least 1,200 male, female and juvenile inmates when it opens between three and four years later.
The four shortlisted companies are: BAM Serco - Sisk; Michael McNamara & Co - Barclays Private Equity Consortium; Sacyr/Somague/Testa/Bowen/
Vector; and Themis (Babcock & Brown/Laing O'Rourke).
The prison is to be developed under a public-private partnership, with the successful bidder designing, building, financing and maintaining the new facility. The maintenance contract will run for up to 35 years.
The Mountjoy prison complex currently houses about 30 per cent of the entire Irish prison population, with many cells in the male prison containing no in-cell sanitation, forcing prisoners to "slop out".
Announcing details of the shortlist for the contract to develop the new prison yesterday, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said it would provide the prison service with the room to develop "progressive rehabilitation programmes" and to introduce single-person cells with in-cell sanitation.
Despite local concerns about a lack of facilities and infrastructure in the area, Mr McDowell also claimed the location of the new prison at Thornton made "sound economic sense".
"The estimated cost to build a new prison complex on the existing Mountjoy site was in excess of €400 million," he said. "The total refurbishment of the Mountjoy complex on its present site would last longer, be more disruptive to the prison system and ultimately be far less satisfactory than a new complex.
"Moreover, the Irish Prison Service estimates that annual savings of the order of €30,000 per prisoner can be generated on a new greenfield site...[ it] will produce a modern prison campus with an appropriate range of modern facilities."
Last September, a Dáil motion backed by Fine Gael and Labour TDs called for an independent evaluation of the purchase of the Thornton farm.
This followed claims that the Government had paid €30 million for unzoned agricultural land worth no more than €6 million and had failed to adequately examine other potential options.This is something which Mr McDowell has strongly disputed.
Fingal County Council has since voted not to facilitate the development of the prison, and to list Thornton Hall, a mid-19th-century house on the east of the site, as a protected structure.
However, the Department of Justice has noted that prisons are exempt from normal planning permission requirements.