The Government is to consider requiring banks and building societies to bear the cost of jailing people they have prosecuted for not paying their debts. The proposal is one of a number of suggestions in a new report on the prison service to be published today by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue.
The report is designed to make the prison service more efficient. Comparisons with services elsewhere in Europe have shown it to be among the most expensive, with the cost of keeping a prisoner in custody for a year averaging more than £45,000.
The Minister is understood to agree with its recommendations, which are to be brought to Government shortly.
Financial institutions are expected to resist any proposal that they pay the cost of keeping a debtor in jail. The effect of the proposal would be to reduce the number of legal actions taken by the institutions which could lead to a debtor being sent to jail. The cost of imprisonment, along with legal costs, would make it uneconomical for banks and building societies to pursue those owing relatively small debts through the courts.
At present about 1 per cent of the prison population is made up of people jailed for not paying debts. The report's proposal is on the basis that jailing a debtor is a benefit to a creditor - such as a bank or building society - and that all or part of the cost should therefore be borne by the institution.
The report, by a review group established by the last government, also advocates delaying imprisonment of people convicted of lesser offences until space for them becomes available in the prison system.
The report was drawn up by an inter-departmental group of officials, and a British management consultant was hired to examine the way the system is currently run. In his report to the group the consultant, Mr Gordon Lakes, said staffing levels in jails in the State were "far more generous than is common elsewhere". The cost of keeping a prisoner in jail was higher than in other European systems reviewed.
The overtime bill for the prison service was £18 million last year, £4 million higher than in 1995, and overtime hours brought the annual gross pay of some middle-ranking prison officers to £55,000.
There are about 2,400 prisoners and prison officers in the jail system. The Minister has said he believes "the present ratio of one-to-one, prisoners to prison officers, is quite high". New prisons, such as the 400-place jail planned for Portlaoise, will be designed to be more efficiently staffed, such as by the use of electronically-controlled gates.
The Prison Officers Association, which was involved in drawing up the report, has accepted that initiatives to increase efficiency are needed.