Prison Officers' Association conference: Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is "hallucinating" if he believes his plans for a drug-free prison regime will succeed, the Prison Officers' Association (POA) has said.
It said Mr McDowell's drug-free proposals, published this week, included no costings and claimed that only one sniffer dog would be available to all prisons to conduct drugs searches.
POA president Gabriel Keaveny told delegates at the annual conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, that Mr McDowell had communicated his plans to prison officers through the media. He must consult the POA and other "relevant agencies" if the plan was to work, Mr Keaveny said.
"Is this grandiose plan for drug-free testing more to do with the next election than solving the real problem? Or is it just a conference gimmick announced to the media on the evening before our conference to deflect them away from the real issues, such as overcrowding, wasted resources and bullying within the service?"
He also questioned why so few people, if any, had been brought before the courts in recent years in relation to smuggling drugs into prisons. The availability of just one dog for drug searches in prisons across the country undermined the proposals.
Mr Keaveny said that while the Department of Justice was seeking to introduce a drug-free regime the Minister was making some of the "worst decisions ever made in the history of the prison service".
Tens of millions had been wasted on a special school for young inmates at St Patrick's Institution, Dublin, which never opened. Similarly, a security unit at Portlaoise Prison for very disruptive prisoners had never been opened. In Wheatfield Prison, Dublin, an all-weather soccer pitch costing €1 million had been constructed which, he said, would be the envy of the Football Association of Ireland.
Mr Keaveny told delegates that the association had been very disappointed at being excluded by the prison service from the 1916 military parade on Easter Sunday. This was despite years of long service given by the officers to the State and despite gardaí being allowed to march.
Mr McDowell conceded the special school at St Patrick's had never opened. "It was a project that is not going to be fully implemented, that's true."
He said it appeared the prison officers had been excluded from the Easter 1916 parade because of "logistical" difficulties. He believed the drug-free prisons regime would work.
And he said video-conferencing facilities in jails, which will be used by inmates to communicate with their legal advisers, would result in efficiencies.