Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-12
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Pádraig O'Sullivan (FF), Cork North-Central

The number of deaths in Cork Prison has doubled since last year. The Inspector of Prisons has said overcrowding has played a significant part in this. His annual report published a few weeks ago highlighted the low morale among officers and the insufficient access to a GP in Cork Prison among other issues.
As the Taoiseach is aware, Cork Prison is frequently overcrowded. Last August, there were a total of 403 prisoners onsite. He knows as well as I do that this facility was only built for 296 prisoners. The latest count shows there are still 372 prisoners onsite. One of the recommendations from the report was to ask the Minister to introduce an upper limit on the number of prisoners that could be held on site.
Can we look into the imposition of an upper limit? We have been talking for quite a while about the need to build an extension to Cork Prison. Will the Taoiseach provide an update on that project?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-12