The closure of the Curragh prison yesterday will lead to the payment of significant mileage expenses to prison officers deployed to other jails, with the imminent closure of three further prisons set to add substantially to this bill.
As talks continued yesterday to try to resolve the dispute about the overtime bill for prisons, the final 38 inmates from the Curragh were moved to the Midlands Prison at Portlaoise.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has initiated a programme of four prison closures in response to the failure of prison officers to agree to his plans to reduce overtime costs, which reached €64 million last year. The Prison Service yesterday confirmed that officers serving in the four prisons due to be closed or taken out of the hands of the Prison Service would be paid mileage allowances to cover their travel to the prisons to which they are redeployed.
However, the director general of the Prison Service, Mr Seán Aylward, said that the officers would be paid reduced mileage rates of 35.71 cent per mile for the smallest car, and higher rates for those with larger cars.
If the 75 officers from the Curragh each received the minimum allowance for the 40-mile round trip five days a week, they would receive some €70 each per week, leading to a total bill of €5,250 per week.
A spokeswoman for the Prison Service said yesterday that the mileage rate was paid for travel to Portlaoise either from the Curragh prison or the officer's home, whichever was the closer. Therefore in some cases, the trip funded by the State would be less than the 40-mile round trip.
However when the jail at Spike Island is closed, and Loughan House and Shelton Abbey are taken out of the control of the Prison Service in the coming weeks, this mileage bill will become much higher as a further 200 officers are redeployed.
Mr Aylward said yesterday that these mileage payments were temporary.
"At a certain point if there is no sign of a settlementthe closures will be made permanent and at that point we will be tapering off the mileage."