The closure of the women's prison, the Dóchas Centre, is under active consideration as part of the plan to close Mountjoy and relocate the prison complex to a greenfield site, The Irish Times has learned.
The Irish Prison Service (IPS) will advertise for sites later this week. Offers including a swap of land for the Mountjoy site will be considered, according to the director of the IPS, Mr Seán Aylward.
When a site has been identified the IPS, in consultation with the Government, will consider whether the State or a private developer will design and build it. Whichever decision is made, the new prison will be managed by the IPS, he stressed, pointing to the fact that the new Midlands Prison was designed and built privately, but is being managed as part of the overall prison service.
The decision to close Mountjoy was taken at a Cabinet meeting last week. This follows years of criticism of the physical conditions in the main prison, which have been widely condemned, both nationally and internationally. The lack of in-cell sanitation means that most prisoners have to "slop out", emptying buckets of their own waste in the mornings. The absence of communal dining areas and other facilities also means that they spend long periods in their cells.
However, the Dóchas women's prison has won widespread praise. The women prisoners have showers in their cells, and a range of facilities for both recreation and training, as well as facilities for keeping babies with them, and for maintaining close contact with their young children. It has only been open a few years, and cost over £30 million to build.
St Patrick's Institution for young offenders has also had substantial investment recently, with a new refurbished unit for 14 to 16-year-olds that has never been opened. That cost €9 million.
The Government has made it clear it intends to realise the value of the Mountjoy site, covering about 12 acres close to the city centre in north Dublin. The site would be much more valuable if sold in its entirety, and access to it would be much more difficult without the Dóchas centre.
This has, in any event, become too small for the demands placed upon it, according to Mr Aylward. "It is running at over-capacity as it is," he said. "It was built for 80 prisoners and we often have 100. We have four women lifers now. We are forced to house women in the sick bay area and in padded cells. Internationally, the demographics of prisoners shows increasing numbers of women being imprisoned, so the need is going to grow." He stressed that the concept on which Dóchas is based will remain in a new women's prison.