Plans by the Minister for Justice to introduce electronic tagging for some offenders have been criticised by Opposition parties. Fine Gael said the system should be used to monitor sex offenders and not just low-level criminals. Labour and the Green Party said resources should be channelled into the probation and welfare service.
Mr McDowell believes tagging will offer an alternative to imprisonment for some offenders, particularly those convicted for the first time or for public order offences.
He also believes it will free up prison spaces. His officials are drafting legislation providing for tagging which is to be brought before Cabinet for approval.
The Irish Penal Reform Trust has come out strongly against the plans, saying criminals who have been tagged in other jurisdictions are not the type of offenders who would have been sent to prison for their crimes.
Fine Gael's spokesman on justice, Mr Jim O'Keeffe, said while tagging "makes sense", particularly for sex offenders, the Government needed to look at the wider reform of the probation services.
"At the 2004 Fine Gael ardfheis, Fine Gael proposed extending the probation service to include a home detention curfew scheme, as well as the use of electronic tagging. Mr McDowell's proposals for electronic tagging, while welcome, fall far short of this comprehensive package of reforms. Furthermore, tagging should be extended to high-risk sex offenders on their release from prison."
Labour's spokesman on justice, Mr Joe Costello, said the current plans would give rise to a system where the only people tagged would be those convicted of relatively minor offences, many of whom would never reoffend anyway.
"The Minister is talking about tagging to ease pressure on our prisons. This is the same Minister who has already closed three prisons at Shanganagh, Spike Island and the Curragh. This is typical of the Minister's incoherence on prisons policy."
There was some merit in tagging sex offenders on their release from prison, Mr Costello said.
Green Party whip Mr Dan Boyle said: "The Minister for Justice's time and energy would be better deployed at aiming to secure more and better resources for the probation services. A properly resourced probation service would be able to do its job more effectively, particularly in the overseeing of community service orders.
"The Green Party believes these orders represent a far better mechanism for addressing the type of offences than the electronic tagging which the Minister for Justice seems to have in mind."
The legislative provision for tagging is to be introduced in the form of an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill. It is understood tagging will be provided and operated by the private sector but that the probation service would intervene if an inmate breached the conditions of his or her tagging.
