Madam, - In his judgment last week explaining why the Supreme Court had awarded Frank Shortt €4.7 million in damages Chief Justice Murray described the conditions in Mountjoy Jail to which Mr Shortt had been sent.
"The floor was of lino, badly burnt and unclean. His bed had a thin horsehair mattress. There was a stench. The cell was infested with mice and cockroaches. There were no washing or toilet facilities. The toilet was a small aluminium soup-pot. He was confined to the cell for 17 hours each day. He had to slop out each day in the toilet area, the floor of which was generally covered with urine, excreta and vomit.
"He was allowed out of the cell to collect his meals which he then took back to the cell to consume. Apart from taking air in the exercise yard in the morning and afternoon, he read in his cell."
What does it say about our public policy that we are, quite rightly, appalled that an individual should be confined at our behest to such circumstances when it later turns out he was innocent of the charge against him, but are quite insistent that ever more of those we are happier to presume to be guilty should be sent to exactly the same place?
Coincidentally enough, last Friday Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell published the final report of a review group he established last November to make recommendations to restore "balance" to the criminal law - in other words, to secure more convictions. He places great reliance on the recommendations of this group and uses it to justify the changes he proposes in his Criminal Justice Bill.
But, in the introduction to that report, the group's chairman, Gerard Hogan SC, felt compelled to make the following remarks:
"Yet I cannot help thinking that society must not ignore the fact that the majority of prisoners are drawn from the more disadvantaged sections of the community and that any balanced response to the problems of crime must also have regard to this factor. A large number of prisoners are the product of dysfunctional families and have experienced significant educational, housing and other social disadvantages. Many of them have only ever encountered hardship, disadvantage and failure in their lives and they have often fallen prey to the evils of alcohol and drug addiction.
"While not for a moment excusing their crimes, the fact remains that some at least of the prison community can justly say that they too are also in one sense the victims of society. The principle that we must hate the sin, but love the sinner is at least 2,000 years old, but yet I fear that as a society we have sometimes lost sight of this fact.
"Although these are matters which stray well beyond the boundaries of the work of the Review Group, these are factors which I nonetheless consider cannot be ignored in the wider public debate."
So, more products of dysfunctional families, with significant educational and other social disadvantages, victims of hardship, disadvantage and failure in their lives and prey to the evils of alcohol and drug addiction are to be confined to verminous and stench-infested cells for 17 hours a day, in which cells they have to urinate and defecate in small aluminium pots and then to eat their meals, being let out only to collect their food and to slop out their excretions in a common toilet area covered in urine, excrement and vomit.
And we think this tackles crime? - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL D HIGGINS TD, President of the Labour Party, Dáil Éireann, Dublin 2.