Prisons and Alternative Sentencing Options: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-22 ============================================================ Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I welcome this debate. It has been said many times before that the Inspector of Prisons Mark Kelly has described the conditions in our prisons as "inhumane and degrading", which has led to the increase in deaths in custody. I did my social science dissertation in 1997 on the difficulties within the Irish prison system and very little has changed. There was overcrowding, drug use, too many remand prisoners, not enough community facilities for young people and not enough bail or supervision orders. I do not think it is being trendy left, Senator McDowell. No one denies there is a role for prison, especially with violent and sexual crimes. However, a disproportionate number of prisoners come from disadvantaged backgrounds and areas of socioeconomic disadvantage, low educational attainment and very high unemployment rates. It is very hard to see how continuing to put people into prison due to structural inequalities they did not cause is going to alleviate any of the difficulties we see. There were 31 deaths in prison custody in 2024. That is shameful. It is a scandalously high number. On overcrowding, why continue to incarcerate people and put them in long-term custody when we know the system is overcrowded and stretched beyond limit? It does not make any sense, especially for people who are on remand. There are welcome measures in the civil law Bill to extend community service orders to 24 months and extend community service hours to 480. However, we need to reduce the amount of short-term custodial sentences for non-violent minor offences. I also argue we need to extend this conversation to look at legalising cannabis for personal use. This is something we cannot keep pushing under the ground. In my time as a youth worker, so many young people I worked with were getting caught up in the criminal justice system for possession of cannabis. It is something we need to start having a proper conversation about instead of kicking it down the road. We spoke about the bail support scheme for women. This is a pilot programme, which I welcome. We want to see greater urgency on it. As was said, we spent a lot of time debating the Mental Health Bill but there are not enough places in the Central Mental Hospital. Was it last February that there were 340 psychiatric patients being held in prisons across the State? A person who will have no problem with me saying their name, Gearoid Coughlan of Inishannon in County Cork, was in the Central Mental Hospital, got referred to Wheatfield Prison and was on 24-hour suicide watch. Prison is not where he should be. Fortunately, he was moved in the last two weeks. It is great to have this debate but we need to look at staffing levels in Oberstown as well as bail supervision schemes. I worked with Extern and we know it is keeping juvenile offenders out of Oberstown, but that campus is at critical levels and has critically low staffing levels. That has to be addressed. The terms and conditions of workers employed in Oberstown are something we have to get on top of because it is getting worse. Some of the children in Oberstown are the most vulnerable children in our State and we are failing them utterly by not investing properly in community-based youth facilities and keeping young people out of 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/seanad/2026-04-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-22