The Government is to press ahead with plans to develop a new prison at Thornton Hall in north Dublin, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced today.
The 2,200-capacity facility will now be built in three phases through a procurement process rather than the initially planned public private partnership. It will be built on a 140 acre greenfield site in Kilsallaghan.
The first phase of the development is expected to be completed in 2014 and will contain 400 cells capable of housing 700 prisoners.
Educational facilities, workshops and visiting areas will also be built on the site. The project is to go out to tender early next year.
Construction of a road into the site is to begin inside the next two months. The 1.5km road will cost about €2.5 million, Mr Ahern said. This will be followed by the erection of a boundary wall and sewerage and water facilities.
When finance is available, the department will proceed with phases two and three of the project which will each deliver a further 500 cells.
Mr Ahern said going to tender on the project made sense in an environment where construction costs had fallen significantly. He said phased approach would mean the first cells at Thornton Hall could open earlier than expected.
"My aim is to provide new spaces at the earliest date possible," he said. "I have instructed Irish Prison Service management to proceed to implement this decision in the shortest possible timeframe."
The Irish prison population last month exceeded 5,000 for the first time and some 1,000 inmates were released early because there was no room for them in the State’s jails.
Mr Ahern said the issue of prison places was one of the biggest for his department as there had been a 20 per cent increase in the number of custodial sentences because of the volume of work completed by the Garda.
He said most people were now going to jail for serious crimes, with more than 80 per cent serving sentences of 12 months or more.
The initial plans to develop Thornton Hall were shelved last year when the Department of Justice decided to cancel talks with the developer as the cost of the project had become unaffordable.
The Leargas consortium was selected to design and build the jail and provide some services once construction was complete. The prison would have been paid for by annual payments over 25 years by the State to Leargas.
