Eur2.1m phone bill for State's prisoners

The State's prisoners have run up a telephone bill of nearly €2.1 million in the last three years, new figures reveal.

The figures, released by the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act, show annual expenditure on prisoner telephone calls has been about €682,000 for each of the last three years.

The Irish Prison Service provides up to four calls a week to prisoners. The practice has been identified in recent years as having an important role in suicide prevention. The calls also allow foreign prisoners to keep in touch with friends and family.

Some 21 per cent of all those sent to Irish prisons last year were non-national, many of whom do not get visits.

Cloverhill Prison is a remand facility, and has the highest concentration of non-national inmates. Its prisoner telephone bill has been the highest in recent years running at €132,000 per annum since 2001.

Prisoners at the State's open prisons - Shelton Abbey, Loughan House and Shanganagh Castle - accrued the lowest telephone bills, of less than €5,000 a year.

The Department refused to release details on the cost to the prison service of providing prisoner escorts. It said because plans were in motion to privatise the escort system, the information was "commercially-sensitive".

An "information notice" is to appear in the EU Official Journal inviting international firms to submit tenders on the provision of the escort service. Plans to privatise escorts form part of the Minister for Justice's blueprint to reduce overtime spending by 50 per cent to €32 million next year.

He also plans to close the Curragh Place of Detention, Kildare, and Fort Mitchel, Cork, and place the running of Shelton Abbey, Co Wicklow, and Loughan House, Co Cavan, outside of the remit of the Irish Prison Service.

The plan will come into effect from January 1st if prison officers fail to agree to a system of annualised hours.