Parliamentary Question: Prisoner Escorts

22nd October 2003

248. Aengus Ó Snodaigh asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the research his Department has conducted into the costs of prisoner escort; the costs of contracting this service out to private companies; and the potential strategies for cost saving while maintaining this service within the public sector. [24582/03]

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. McDowell): A study of the prisoner transportation system was carried out in 2000 by a prisoner transportation review group comprising officials from the Irish Prison Service, the Courts Service and the Garda Síochána. It was chaired by a former Garda chief superintendent with a logistics background. Their report formed the background to a further review of the escort and transportation of prisoners in 2001-2002 which was carried out by a staffing and operations review team, SORT. In 2002, this review was in turn followed by further examination of prisoner escort patterns across the Prison Service in the context of the overall staffing and operations review project and the preparation of a proposal for negotiation with the staff side. The focus of all these reviews was to explore more efficient ways to undertake the escort function.

The Irish Prison Service has proposed that the escort function should be provided from within the service by a centrally managed escort corps which would rationalise the way in which escorts are conducted. This is one element of a composite proposal for change to eliminate the perennial overtime problem in the Prison Service which has been put to the staff side and is currently the subject of a ballot.

Pending the outcome of that ballot it would be inappropriate to speculate on the potential cost or cost savings impact in adopting an alternative approach to the provision of prisoner escort services. As to what it would cost to contract out this service, this would be entirely dependent on the scope of the service proposed for outsourcing and on the outcome of a tendering process.