Only one in eight sex offenders in Irish prisons has received treatment and 160 offenders are due to be released in the next 18 months, according to the Prison Officers' Association.
The POA assistant general secretary, Mr Ray Murphy, said only 37 sex offenders had taken part in the nine-month treatment programme at Arbour Hill prison in Dublin. He called for an extension of the programme to all prisons where sex offenders were held.
At the beginning of last month there were 290 sex offenders in custody: seven in Mountjoy, 12 in Cork, 93 in the Curragh, one in St Patrick's, nine in Limerick, 19 in Castlerea, 92 in Arbour Hill and 57 in Wheatfield.
"We also want indeterminate sentencing for sex offenders," Mr Murphy said, so that a prisoner could be released only if he or she underwent treatment.
On release they should be monitored by gardai. "It should be compulsory for them to go through a programme of treatment in order to protect society."
The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said he was considering extending the Arbour Hill programme to the Curragh, Co Kildare, where a large number of clerics convicted of sex abuse were held.
On Tuesday in the Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice O'Higgins requested information on treatment for convicted rapist Anthony Cawley. The judge is due to sentence Cawley next month for the rape of a fellow prisoner in Arbour Hill in 1996.
Mr O'Donoghue said the treatment programme at Arbour Hill was very intensive, but prisoners could not be forced to take it. "Not only must it be voluntary but the individual coming into the course must be suitable for the course."
Every prisoner "who is suitable and who volunteers will, before his release, receive treatment," he said.
The question of supervised releases would be raised in a Department discussion document on sex offences due to be published this month. This would also deal with a register of sex offenders, "which I have committed myself to," Mr O'Donoghue said.
