It is "inexplicable" why anyone interested in the welfare of prisoners could be opposed to the building of a new prison such as Thornton Hall, Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan said yesterday.
He got the impression from newspapers that building new prisons "must be intrinsically bad".
"I must say it is inexplicable to me how anyone who cares about prisoners' rights and staff in Mountjoy and Cork prisons can take that view."
He was not contemplating a massive growth in the use of imprisonment, but the general population was growing rapidly and there was no spare capacity in prisons. The forecasts used for planning Thornton envisaged a slight decline in the number of prisoners per 1,000 population.
Mr Lenihan said our rate of imprisonment was about half that of the UK, and was also lower than countries such as Germany, France and Italy.
Work on Thornton, which will replace the Mountjoy complex, will begin at the end of this year, and is expected to be completed in 2010.
Mr Lenihan was speaking at the launch of The Whitaker Report 20 Years On: Lessons Learned or Lessons Forgotten?by the Katherine Howard Foundation and the Irish Penal Reform Trust.
He said the current prison population of about 3,400 "falls well short of the 4,000 predicted in the Whitaker report to be imprisoned by 1995".
Mr Lenihan also said he planned to clamp down on drugs in prison by extending the prison drugs strategy and introducing mandatory drug testing.
A new set of prison rules will be introduced in October, some 60 years after the current rules were drawn up. They will provide for mandatory drug testing and searching within prisons.
Government approval has also been given for the establishment of a prison drug-detection dog unit; a support group which would gather intelligence on illicit material being smuggled; security screening for everyone entering prisons; and segregation units for suspected gang leaders at Cloverhill Prison.
