Inmates should not be allowed to leave prison until they can prove they are able to read and write, a Church of Scientology representative told a Dáil committee yesterday.
In a suggestion last night labelled as "quite bizarre" by the prison service, and possibly "discriminatory" by the Department of Justice, Gerard Ryan of the Church of Scientology's Dublin mission told the Education and Science Committee prisoners should be "incentivised" to ensure they become literate and numerate.
This would mean they would have to stay in prison until they were literate and numerate - but would also mean if they managed to do so before the end of their sentence, they might be released early, he said.
The Church of Scientology also believed if a citizen insists on leaving school without functional literacy and numeracy, they should be denied any State funding, Mr Ryan added.
Mr Ryan's suggestions were greeted with widespread scepticism yesterday. Fine Gael spokeswoman on Education Olwyn Enright told the committee that they seemed to be "all stick and very little carrot", while her colleague, David Stanton TD, labelled them "totally daft".
Green Party spokesman on Education Paul Gogarty TD said he did not know why the scientologists had been invited to make a submission to the committee.
A spokesman for the Irish prison service pointed out that, with some 3,000 people currently in custody - half of whom are estimated to have serious literacy problems - this could mean around 1,500 people would effectively be serving a life sentence until they improved their literacy skills.
A second session of the committee yesterday heard calls for the setting up of a national adult literacy strategy targeted towards the traveller community.
Other submissions outlined the need for those with the lowest literacy levels to be prioritised and increased funding for dyslexia programmes.