The Irish Prison Service is to outsource key drug treatment, counselling and psychologists' positions in a bid to overcome recruitment difficulties that are undermining efforts to introduce a drug-free regime, it has emerged.
A tender for 24 addiction counsellors has already been awarded as part of a €2 million investment this year to recruit the personnel needed to run the stalled drug- free regime.
A further initial annual budget of €300,000 has been earmarked to operate a system of mandatory drug testing, which will be one of the central elements of the new regime.
Difficulties with the recruitment of medical and mental health experts to prisons have now worsened to such an extent that two recent recruitment campaigns by the prison service and the public appointments service failed to fill one psychologist's post at the Midlands Prison, Portlaoise.
The director general of the prison service, Brian Purcell, is now considering alternative ways to fill vacant psychologists' posts across the prison service, with outsourcing considered the most likely option.
This model has already been used for the provision of key services including:
• Four community groups, including Dublin's Merchants Quay project, have been enlisted to provide addiction support and counselling for drug users serving sentences and those on post-release schemes. These will be funded from the dormant accounts fund.
• An in-reach Hepatitis C nurse has been contracted from St James's Hospital, Dublin, to provide treatment for inmates with the disease in Dublin jails. An expansion of this service to prisons outside the capital is being examined.
• A tender for dedicated drug treatment pharmacy services will be issued before the end of April.
Seven prison nurses and five specially-trained prison officers have already been assigned to dedicated drug-treatment teams in prisons with significant needs. These will provide services to all inmates with addiction problems on committal.
The Department of Justice has said that while difficulties in relation to the recruitment of psychologists still needed to be overcome, the number of such professionals working in jails in the Republic had reached 16, the highest ever total.
In the short-term, a clinical psychologist working in Limerick Prison is to begin providing outreach services to the Midlands Prison.
The developments in the provision of medical and mental health services for drug-using prisoners come after a number of measures were put in place to reduce the supply of drugs into the prison system.
New visiting arrangements have been put in place as part of which some inmates are only allowed visits from visitors approved by the prison service. Some inmates are only allowed screened visits during which they are separated from visitors by a screen of glass, with no contact permitted.
Sniffer dogs have also been introduced on a limited basis to identify visitors carrying drugs. High-quality nets have also been erected over exercise yards to prevent contraband being thrown over perimeter walls.
New handheld electronic devices have also been issued to prison officers to enable them to detect when smuggled-in mobile phones are being used by inmates.
Mobile phones have been used to direct crime from prison cells and also to arrange the smuggling of drugs, through internal concealment, by new committals or inmates returning to jails after periods of temporary release.