The Department of Justice has claimed that the authors of a highly critical report on prisons "never set foot in an Irish prison". A Department spokesman also rejected some of the findings of the report, which was compiled by the French-based human rights group, International Prison Watch.
Contrary to the report, the "vast majority" of young prisoners were not housed with adults and not subjected to physical violence, sexual abuse or gratuitous humiliations, he said. "On very rare occasions, because of overcrowding, we could end up with a situation where younger prisoners are housed with older offenders. It would only arise in circumstances when they arrive in prison late at night and space has to be found. As soon as is practicable, arrangements are made to house them with their own age group", the spokesman said.
Denying that St Patrick's Institution was rat-infested, as the report suggested, the spokesman said a comprehensive programme of rodent eradication was in place in all prisons. An additional £52 million was allocated for prison refurbishment in this year's Estimates, he added.
However, Opposition parties called on the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, to introduce an imaginative programme of community-based sanctions for offenders. Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr Jim Higgins, said there should be a trebling of resources to the probation and welfare service. Democratic Left's spokeswoman on justice, Ms Liz McManus, said Mr O'Donoghue should speed up legislation to provide alternative non-custodial methods of dealing with civil debt and non-payment of fines.
Since it cost £900 a week to keep an offender in prison, it did not make sense to continue committing people to jail for debts and non-payment of fines.