Families face expense and upset to visit relatives jailed abroad because administrative delays hinder or prevent their transfers to Irish prisons, a report declares.
Delays here and abroad in approving and processing transfers and mistrust between governments are among the causes, it says. The report was published yesterday by the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas, a sub-committee of the Bishops' Commission for Emigrants.
Ireland is a signatory to a Council of Europe convention which allows for the transfer of prisoners between the 44 signatory states.
There are about 1,200 people from the Republic in foreign jails, about 80 per cent of them in England, a press conference heard yesterday. There are about 150 foreign nationals in Irish jails.
Only a minority of Irish prisoners abroad wish to return to serve out their sentences here, the report says. But they quickly run up against rules which make the transfer impossible, or delays which can go on for years.
One man in prison in England applied five times since 1993 for a transfer to a jail in Northern Ireland. His family lived in the north-west of the Republic and a jail in Northern Ireland would be relatively close. Each request was turned down.
When the Republic ratified the Convention in 1995 - nine years after signing it - he applied to the Minister for Justice in Dublin for a transfer. It took nearly two years for the Minister to approve it. His papers were then with the Home Office in Britain for five months until he committed suicide in November 1997.
The report suggests particular difficulties with transferring prisoners from the United States to here. For example, one man who is a prisoner in Illinois will be entitled to 50 per cent remission if he stays there. Because Ireland has a different remission rate, he would serve an extra two years if transferred here and he is willing to do this.
But the application has been refused by the authorities in Illinois. This is because the Irish authorities cannot guarantee that he will not be eligible for temporary release at some stage.
In Ireland, the Chief State Solicitor's Office was singled out as a source of delay by Ms Nuala Kelly, co-ordinator of the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas. The office "could improve its efficiency in processing applications and in processing warrants", she said yesterday.
Launching the report Mr Declan Costello, a former president of the High Court, was critical of the delays. "It is all wrong in my view that these administrative delays should be such as are outlined in this report," he said.
Archbishop Michael Neary, chairman of the Bishops' Commission for Emigrants, said families were being unjustly penalised. "Lack of liberty is the price the prisoner pays for his crimes. Families should not be made to suffer for this," he said.
Mr Tom Enright TD said he would raise the issue with the legal rights committee of the Council of Europe.
email: pomorain@irish-times.ie Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas: icpo@iol.ie