The Minister for Justice has accepted strong criticism of conditions in Mountjoy Prison, indicating that they can only be improved when the dispute over the €60 million prison officers' overtime bill is resolved.
Mr McDowell said yesterday that he proposed to demolish Mountjoy in its entirety. He said that he agreed completely with the Inspector of Prisons, retired judge Mr Dermot Kinlen, that conditions there were unacceptable.
However, the key to providing investment to improve prison conditions, he said, was the resolution of the overtime dispute, which is the subject of talks this week in the Labour Court.
In a report circulated to prison management and the Department of Justice, Mr Kinlen said he wanted to see his office put on a statutory basis, but the Oireachtas was in no rush to do this.
He complained that he had no authority or powers which were based in law.
He said there was evidence of chronic overcrowding and violence in Mountjoy Prison, that there were occasional sexual assaults on prisoners and that the Mountjoy visiting committee had no powers, either.
He had visited the prison recently before writing his report. In certain holding cells there was gross overcrowding, and prisoners slept covered with dirty duvets and used a sink as a urinal.
Last July Mr Kinlen called for the demolition of both Mountjoy and Portlaoise prisons because of their poor conditions.
He said the Department of Justice was slow to give him information he required.
However, in remarks tying the issue of prison conditions to the current dispute with prison officers, Mr McDowell said yesterday that substantial savings on the officers' overtime bill would free up money for investment in prisons.
At its current level, overtime for prison officers would cost €300,000 over five years, he said on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme.
"Imagine how many clean, modern, beautifully run prisons we could have if the money put into that kind of purpose . . . rather than being thrown away in overtime payments in a system which is simply morally indefensible."
He said it was unacceptable that in the 21st century there was no sanitation in most of the cells in Mountjoy and that prisoners were still "slopping out".
As a humanitarian gesture he had asked that a television be put into every cell in the prison. "I don't stand over Mountjoy," he said.
He did not respond to the demand by the Inspector of Prisons to have his office put on a statutory basis, but said he would put the Prison Service on such a basis.
His priority was to get the system right and to ensure that antiquated, old-fashioned work practices which existed in prisons should be set aside.
A modern prison service should be built, and this required some "economic sanity".