NO work has been done on the provision of a new remand prison at Wheatfield, Dublin, and construction will not start until 1998.
The Pounds 40 million jail, capable of holding 400 prisoners, is a central plank of the Government's anti crime measures published on Tuesday.
Confirmation that work on the prison will take up to 18 months to get under way drew scorn from the Opposition in Leinster House.
Meanwhile, a Department of Finance spokesman said that contrary to media reports, the Minister, Mr Quinn, was making available whatever additional funding the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, required for her crime package. So far, the extra monies requested for that package amounted to just under Pounds 1 million, he said.
The additional Pounds 1 million or so sought by the Minister for Justice covers the cost of recruiting extra gardai bringing civilians into the force to release gardai from clerical and administrative work and the appointment of an additional three Circuit Court Judges.
The Progressive Democrats leader, Ms Mary Harney, said the lengthy wait for the Wheatfield prison "says a lot about the Government's failure to grasp the reality of rising crime". She said it was unlikely that the prison would be ready before 2006.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said last night that the planning, design and tendering procedures leading to the placing of a contract for the prison complex "would normally take about 14-18 months to complete from date of decision".
Planning for the project would begin at once, she said, but preparations are unlikely to be finished before the end of the year.
"In view of the size and nature of the new prison now proposed, it will be necessary to reassess the capacities of the existing services at Wheatfield. Until this is done, it is not possible to say to what extent the existing services will meet requirements or what extra facilities will be needed", the spokeswoman added.
The Department hoped that "once the planning process was completed it should be possible to get started on site".
The Prisons Planning Section of the Department says that the Curragh Prison with 68 places will be finished this year; the Castlerea Special Unit for 25 offenders is due for completion ink 1996 also; work on the new Women's Prison for 60 offenders, is due to begin next January; the new main prison at Castlerea for, 125 inmates is due to commence also in January; the new wing for 55 offenders at Limerick Prison is due to begin at the same time.
Meanwhile, the new Special Unit, headed by a garda, to target suspects assets has yet to be appointed and no decision has been made on who should lead the new body.