Prison officers in the North may consider industrial action after their leaders dismissed a redundancy package as inadequate. Up to 1,100 officers are expected to lose their jobs over the next two years as inmates are released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. Although some officers with long service are expected to receive pre-tax pay-offs worth over £200,000, the Prison Officers' Association said the overall offer was not generous enough.
The redundancies are expected to start in March. The POA's chairman, Mr Finlay Spratt, said officers were being offered only a maximum of two years' salary above the standard civil service redundancy terms.
While Maghaberry and Magilligan prisons will remain open, the Maze is expected to close once all loyalist and republican inmates are released. "Prison officers are being thrown on the scrap heap. They should be out on the streets fighting for what is justifiably theirs because in Northern Ireland it seems you need to be a lawbreaker to achieve anything", Mr Spratt said.
However, the director general of the North's Prison Service, Mr Robin Halward, described the package as generous and said the British government had no more money to offer. "We have come up with what we and the Treasury, and others concerned, consider to be an appropriate offer in financial terms."