The recent record of prison building underlines the need for more long-term planning, writes Conor Lally, Crime Correspondent
When Garda Tony Tighe and Garda Mick Padden were killed by so called joyriders in Dublin in April 2002, the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats government of the day promised to get tough with young offenders.
The driver of the stolen Mazda sports car that mowed down the two gardaí on the Stillorgan dual carriageway was a 16-year-old with a string of previous convictions. His passenger was just 15.
The incident stunned the Irish public and cast a shadow over a Garda force which already felt frustrated in its efforts in dealing with offenders so young.
The government believed it had the answer when it hatched plans for a new "Special School" for boys at St Patrick's Institution in the Mountjoy complex.
It was decided that until the Department of Education increased its capacity to accommodate young detainees, responsibility for their care would switch to the prison service in the shape of the special school.
It was to be the jewel in the prisons crown; intervening in the lives of the young and ensuring through education their diversion from a life of crime. It included sleeping accommodation, classrooms, recreational areas, state of the art audio visual equipment and the like.
According to a new review of capital expenditure by the Irish Prison Service (IPS), the special school delivered what it promised. It has described the facility as "bright" and "modern" adding, "its fitness for purpose is easily apparent". In a nutshell, €6.65 million well spent.
The only trouble was that the special school never opened. By the time it was complete in 2003 the Department of Education indicated its preparedness to take young offenders into its care.
The disused building is perhaps a symbol for the prison development mistakes of the 1990s. As crime increased during the decade, the well-intentioned governments of the day reacted with piecemeal prison projects but no joined-up thinking.
The projects that were completed after 2000 were, in isolation, good ones. But together they formed a system in which the latest multi-million euro plan made redundant the most recently-developed expensive building. This modus operandi afflicted most of the other prison building projects covered in the new report, Irish Prison Service Capital Expenditure Review.
It outlines the cases of Dublin's Cloverhill and Wheatfield prisons with their duplicity of services despite being situated on sites in Clondalkin literally across the road from each other.
Similarly it concludes that nobody saw the merits of shared services between the adjacent Portlaoise and Midlands prisons.
The report compares Wheatfield with other similar prisons in the UK noting of them: "While all were built 15-25 years ago, they are however designed, built and equipped in a similar fashion to Wheatfield."
It points to the tens of millions spent on the Mountjoy complex now consigned to builder's rubble after the approval of plans to relocate Mountjoy to Thornton Hall in north Dublin.
The review also notes that Cloverhill, the country's only remand prison, is full just six years into its life. It was a prison, like many of the other facilities, built to meet the demands of the day on which it was approved. There was no long-term plan.
The new report also bemoans the lack of documentation which would allow for the more effective appraisal of multi-million euro projects both on the planning and post completion phases.
For example, the 515-bed Midlands Prison completed in 2003 cost €56.2 million. Yet the authors were not provided with any breakdown of the estimate.
The report notes the lack of a single document which clearly defines the future of prison facilities. "Rather [ plans are] identifiable through reference to organisational strategies, ministerial decisions, financial budgets, population projections, project lists and discussions with IPS personnel." It calls for a system of business plans, progress reports and minuted meetings that would provide an elusive "audit trail".