A £35 million wing is to be built at Cork Prison, creating an extra 150 cells, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform said yesterday.
At the contract signing ceremony at the prison, Mr O'Donoghue refused to comment on the Liam Lawlor case or whether Fianna Fail had entered into a voting pact with the Independent TD and said any comment by him would be inappropriate.
The new cells, which will have individual sanitation, will include special provision for 46 juvenile offenders. Until now such offenders had to be dealt with by the prison system outside Cork.
At present only eight of the existing 150 cells at Cork Prison have private sanitation.
The prison held 284 inmates yesterday, although it was designed to accommodate just 150.
The prison governor, Mr Frank McCarthy, said the prison was very overcrowded and urgently needed the new accommodation.
The first phase of the redevelopment plan is to include a new perimeter wall around the prison.
Mr O'Donoghue said that during his term of office an additional 1,207 prison places had been provided by the end of last year throughout the prison system. A further 700 closed-prison places were to be added in phase 2 of the prison building programme.
A total of £87 million had been provided for crime prevention measures in the National Development Plan, and since the Government took office crime had fallen by more than 20 per cent, he added.