Prison Service Dail Éireann — 2024-03-21 ============================================================ Éamon Ó Cuív (FF), Galway West I met the Tánaiste in December 2020, at which time there were 29 prisoners in the E block in Portlaoise Prison. There are now fewer than ten. By midsummer, the figure could be half that again. Does the Tánaiste not agree that is a radically different situation from the situation that caused the Army to be deployed to the prison in the first place? I welcome what he had to say about reviews but is it not time we dealt with this issue and stopped wasting €1.9 million on a small number of prisoners who could easily be held securely under the normal prison regime? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-03-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-03-21