New Prisons needed ?

Simon Harris just said in a statement... too many people are being sent to prison.

I did work on that with the ESB years ago. Huge amount of money already spent on it. Needs to be finished.

Government probably afraid of how much it'll cost them to finish. 😂

it just sounds good to him, there is no reason or logic to it really.

people often suggest the state should build certain things or relocate certain services to the most random places without thinking as to whether it is workable or not, or about the fact that there is a reason certain services were never based in those areas in the first place.

@quitelife's post didn't quote for some reason but to answer your question.

spike island was difficult to work and more resource intensive then other prisons apparently, at least that is what i heard anyway.

it had no more of a deterrent effect then other prisons i would expect.

it's never going to reopen as a prison no matter how much some want it, it is now doing reasonably well as a tourist attraction.

because small jail terms for such offenses not only don't work as a deterrent but would just cost to much when there are cheap alternatives available.

+ in a small country it would eventually get out that the individuals were in prison anyway so it's pointless and pissing money down the drain given that not having a criminal record yet jailing individuals anyway wouldn't remove the issue of those individuals finding it hard to get employment anyway.

we already have multiple prisons so building the prisons near the cities and replacing the likes of mount joy and all of the older prisons which are life expired won't cost any more then currently.

building it in mullingar would cost more because extra infrastructure would have to be built, + staff would have to come further to get to their job so harder to get staff.

For the last time, yes.

This act of blaming the Greens singlehandedly for everything is nothing but absolute political illiteracy. The social policies of FF, FG, SD, Lab, SF and the Greens are all largely aligned, and have been for some a long time. The greens could be obliterated from existence tomorrow, and literally nothing would change in terms of policy in this country. That's why the make a good coalition partner: there's no difference between their policies and everyone else's. Yet for some reason they're the bogeyman. You have to face facts - the electorate or Ireland vote overwhelmingly and en-mass for centrist, social democratic parties. It's not foisted on us by some tiny band of evil "woke" masterminds from the Green Party.

The Greens weren't in power when the FG/Lab government of 2011 said:

“The Minister (Alan Shatter, FG) agrees with the Review Group’s view that prison overcrowding cannot be solved solely by building more prisons and that further steps are required to reduce the prisoner population.”

In fact, they didn't even win a singe seat in the 2011 General Election, so didn't even have a TD in the Dail at the time.

Development of Thornton Hall was finally cancelled in January 2019. The Greens were not in government at the time either. FG and some independents were, with the "confidence and supply" agreement with FF. The Greens had 2 TDs at the time, and were in opposition. It's the same as the way people blame the Greens for introducing the Co2 motor tax system, even though they weren't in Government when it was announced, and every other party were falling over themselves to say it was their idea.

I accept your argument, however have you ever heard of a thing called "the Metro".... 🤣

All non-trial hearings (committal hearings and the like) should be by video link.

There's endless prison service and garda man-hours wasted on shuttling crims around the place, even within Dublin.

AFAIK if your sentence in Spain is 24 months or less you don't do any jail time.

No they're not... Gardaí haven't escorted prisoners from Jails to court since pre-covid. They bring fresh committals from the District Courts to jail alright but that's about it - and that will (usually) be from the local court to the local prison.

A new jail isn't going to be built any time soon but a way of creating bed spaces might be to deport all the foreign nationals in our prisons. 600+ of them from a prison population of around 4,000. IMO if they've done something bad enough to end up in jail then it's highly unlikely that they're going to be productive citizens on their release. There's exceptions of course but that's going to be the case for the vast majority.