A RADICAL overhaul of the prison service was called for by the PD spokeswoman on justice in the Dail last night.

Ms Liz O'Donnell proposed the setting up of a separate executive prison service under the day-to-day control of a director appointed by the Government. She called for the appointment of an inspector of prisons, with responsibility for the discipline and welfare of those in custody, and as an independent scrutineer of the service.

The Minister for Justice should undertake three-yearly reviews of prison accommodation and provide the necessary spaces, she said. A register of temporary release, containing details of each release order, would be available for inspection by the public.

Introducing her party's private member's Prisons Bill, Ms O'Donnell estimated that an additional 3,500 prison spaces - an increase of at least 50 per cent - were required. She said the private sector should be invited to build new prisons to tight budgets and time-frames.

She said the prison service cost a "colossal" £120 million annually. This was £2 million a week, and represented an average annual cost per prisoner of £45,000. Prison officers' overtime costs last year ran to £18 million. Costs in the prison service had risen by 50 per cent over the last five years and yet there were only 8 per cent more prison spaces.

Mr Michael McDowell (PD, Dublin South East) said Irish prisons were not prisons at all. "They are internment camps, where people are suffering in overcrowded cells. They are awash with drugs, and this Government is aware of that fact."

The Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, said that for the first time since 1989 the figures for 1996 showed that the crime graph was going down. Rejecting Ms O'Donnell's Bill, she said much of it was redundant in that it purported to confer powers on the Minister which already existed or which it was not necessary to put on a statutory basis. The establishment of an independent prisons board or agency to run the prison service - to which the Government was fully committed - gave rise to complex issues which essentially the Bill ignored.

Ms Owen said the whole thinking behind the PD approach to prisons seemed to be that "you can achieve an improved prison system with additional prison accommodation by some sort of legislative declaration without, of course, having to spend any money.

Ms Owen said 30 extra places were provided in St Patrick's Institution in February of last year. Twenty-five places had been provided in the special unit at Castlerea and 125 extra places would be provided in the main prison there by the end of this year.

The D wing at Limerick prison would provide 55 extra places next October. The Curragh prison, with places for 68 prisoners, was brought into use towards the end of last year. And the department was about to go to tender for both the new women's prison with 60 places and the new rem and centre for 400 at Wheatfield.

Giving a general welcome to the Bill, the Fianna Fail spokesman on justice, Mr John O'Donoghue, accused the Government of being soft on crime. "They have attacked crime with the resolve of a retired J-cloth. They have laid in wait for serious crime by crouching behind pillars of candy-floss clutching handfuls of cotton wool."

His party, he said, was the first to advocate a separate remand prison, with interim measures taken while it was being built.

The drug situation in Mountjoy was out of control, he added. The prison visiting committee estimated that up to 35 per cent of the inmates were drug users.

Staff members had even commented that the tension level resulting from the eradication of drugs would inevitably lead to the injury of prison officers.

Debate on the Bill resumes tonight.