A treatment programme for sex offenders in the Curragh Prison, which the Minister for Justice told the Dail would be open this year, will not now come into operation, the Department of Justice has admitted.
The Department said that due to staff shortages it was unable to fulfil the commitment to the new treatment programme.
There are about 300 sex offenders in prison at the moment, and the Curragh contains the largest number of any prison in the State, almost 100. Arbour Hill has almost the same number, and the remainder are spread around other prisons. There is a treatment programme for sex offenders in Arbour Hill, which admits 10 at a time.
But the larger concentration of sex offenders in the Curragh has no such programme and did not even have a probation officer until recently. This means that dozens of offenders will be released without having received any treatment at all.
The fact that there will be no sex offender programme in the Curragh this year was admitted by a spokesman for the Department of Justice at the weekend. Mr Des O'Mahony, head of the Department's clinical psychology service, was representing Mr O'Donoghue at the founding conference of the Irish branch of the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA).
"The Minister is aware and fully accepts that a potentially powerful way of reducing the level of risk of many imprisoned sex offenders is through a comprehensive relapse prevention strategy," Mr O'Mahony said.
"As the Minister indicated in the Dail recently, he had hoped that it might be possible to have a dedicated sex offender programme fully operational in the Curragh Prison by the end of this year. However, because of staff shortages this will not be the case. However, the probation and welfare service and the clinical psychology service of the Department are recruiting extra staff at present."
A spokesman for the Minister told The Irish Times yesterday that the recruitment process was now almost complete and it was intended that the therapeutic programme would be in place early next year.
Mr O'Mahony also told the conference that the new Sex Offenders Bill would create a new civil court order to deal with the behaviour of sex offenders when released into the community.
Similar legislation recently enacted in the UK provides for a civil protection order that can be activated if an offender loiters in an area prohibited by the conditions of his release, such as a children's playground.
The Bill will also provide, in addition to a prison sentence following conviction for a sex offence, for a period of supervision under the aegis of the probation and welfare service.
The conference was attended by representatives of the Garda sexual assault and domestic violence unit, people working with sex abusers in various health boards around the State, psychologists and probation officers and people working with sex offenders in Northern Ireland.
According to its vice-chairwoman, Ms Rhonda Turner, the Irish branch of NOTA will unite the experiences of different disciplines in the area to improve therapeutic practice and develop social policy aimed at the reduction of sexual victimisation.