Each meeting of the Mountjoy prison visiting committee cost the State an average of £1,139.93 in travel expenses and subsistence payments for committee members, the House was told.

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said that between January and July last year, the cumulative mileage of committee members was 12,883 miles for seven ordinary and two special meetings costing £8,770 while subsistence payments amounted to £1,489.37.

Criticising Government monitoring and operation of such committees, Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr Jim Higgins, said appointments to prison visiting committees should be restricted to people living within 70 miles of the institution.

He claimed that membership of the committees was "basically decided by virtue of a person's political affiliations" and was "in no way connected to a person's competence, skills ability or training".

The Minister rejected this and said people were not selected "willy-nilly" but on the basis of their capabilities. They were also selected to ensure a geographic spread. Mr O'Donoghue said the travel expenses worked out at an average of £974.44 in travel costs and £165.49 in subsistence payments for each meeting. He pointed out that committee members did not receive any remuneration and travel and subsistence costs were paid in line with Civil Service rates. Previous visiting committees had generated similar levels of travelling expenses for that committee, he said.

Mr Higgins said there was an "absolute need for professional monitoring carried out by people competently trained with suitable qualifications to carry out this task. Does the Minister agree it is high time to change the system and I am not being political in this regard?"

Mr O'Donoghue said the prison system was not in crisis "far from it. We have embarked on the most ambitious prison building project in the history of the State," he said to an interruption from Labour's deputy leader, Mr Brendan Howlin, who said "crisis - what crisis?"

Mr O'Donoghue added that successive ministers had appointed good people to these committees and "the work done by them should not be denigrated in the manner deputy Higgins which seemed to do".

Mr Higgins said it was "high time" to introduce some fundamental regulations and that 90 per cent of the prison population in Mountjoy came from the Dublin area so people from within the Dublin catchment area should be on that visiting committee.

The Minister said the position was clear. "Prisoners in Irish prisons can come from any part of the country and it is only appropriate that people on the visiting committees come from various parts of the country."