Prison Visiting Regulations Dail Éireann — 2020-12-10 ============================================================ James Browne (FF), Wexford I thank the Deputy. I absolutely understand that the loss of family contact has an impact on prisoners. This is something which has affected people across society over the last year as a result of Covid. I agree that prisoners having contact with family helps with stability and can result in better outcomes upon release. I also agree that having to choose which two members will attend a visit will put some families in a very difficult situation but this has been necessary across all of our services. We have seen it in nursing homes as well. Very difficult choices have had to be made. I will certainly encourage the IPS to introduce any flexibility it can while allowing for health considerations and concerns. --- 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/2020-12-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:55+00:00 Sitting date: 2020-12-10