It cost the taxpayer almost €100,000 to keep each prisoner last year, according to the Irish Prison Service (IPS) annual report that was published today.
However, the IPS believes the average annual cost of €90,900 will be reduced by more than €20,000 per prisoner when Dublin's Mountjoy Prison moves to a greenfield site in Thorntal Hall, north Co Dublin.
"The construction of a modern prison facility to replace the Dickensian, antiquated facilities which currently exist in Mountjoy will allow for significant cost savings," the IPS said in a statement.
It said the installation of security features such as electronic locking systems and extensive CCTV will allow for reductions in operating costs to be achieved.
The annual report for 2005 shows that there were 10,658 committals to prison last year, of which 47.7 per cent were committals under sentence.
The daily average number of people in custody in 2005 was 3,151 a decrease of almost 1.5 per cent on 2004.
A total of 2,185 non-nationals were committed to prison; of these, 860 (40 per cent) were detained for short periods under immigration laws.