Prison Service
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-19
============================================================

Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

I do not agree that it is tantamount to torture. Like the Deputy, I have visited the majority of prisons. I have visited seven, and I will be visiting another one very shortly that I have not visited already. There is a lot of excellent work going on in prisons. Many people who come out of prison do not go on to offend again. That is particularly the case in respect of serious offences. I am well aware that there are people in prison who, because of addiction issues or chaotic lives, do go on to commit further offences. That is a challenge in terms of how it can be responded to.
I engaged with the Inspector of Prisons, Mr. Kelly, and had a good conversation with him in respect of this issue. At present, we have about 5,800 people in prison. We have a population of 5.5 million. Ours is not a society that is at the higher echelons of incarceration, either in Europe or across the wider world. We have a moderate view in terms of who needs to be incarcerated. As the Deputy knows, however, there are debates in this House on a variety of issues, including that of victims saying that they want justice, and justice sometimes requires incarceration.

---

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/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19