Prison Visiting Committee Annual Reports 2023

17th July 2025

On 14 July, the Department of Justice published the 2023 Annual Reports from the Visiting Committees for each prison in Ireland.

The reports of the Visiting Committees highlight a number of significant issues experienced by people in Irish prisons throughout 2023, including, for example, people sleeping on the floors of overcrowded cells, unacceptable delays in access to mental health services, minimal education, work and training opportunities in some prisons, limited opportunities for in-person family visits, and the wide availability of illicit drugs.

IPRT notes that these are all issues raised in previous Visiting Committees’ reports (see the 2022 Annual Reports from the Visiting Committees), and yet there appears to have been very little progress towards improving the situation for people in prison. Further, many of these issues are directly related to the current prison overcrowding crisis, which has only increased in severity since 2023. For comparison, the prison population on Monday 17 July 2023 was 4,698, or 106 percent of prison capacity. Today, Thursday 17 July 2025, the current prison population is 5,528, or 119 percent of prison capacity.

Given this significant increase in prison overcrowding, IPRT is deeply concerned that the issues detailed in the 2023 Visiting Committees’ reports have worsened since 2023. IPRT maintains that the current situation in Irish prisons is untenable, and the Minister and government must take immediate steps to reduce the prison population and ensure that no-one in Irish prisons is subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.