THERE is no question of Mountjoy Prison being sold off and the proceeds used for investment elsewhere in the prison system, the Minister for Justice said yesterday.
Mrs Owen was responding to a suggestion from the Government's anti drugs task force that Mountjoy was ill equipped to deal with the drugs problem.
Introducing the group's second report on Wednesday, the task force chairman, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said it was the members "strong feeling" that the prison should be closed down and sold off.
But visiting the jail yesterday for the opening of a new catering training project, Mrs Owen said the Government had no intention of selling the jail, now or in future. "You couldn't get a better site for a Dublin prison. So many of the prisoners here come from the surrounding areas," she said.
The Minister added that the way forward for Mountjoy was the gradual modernisation of all its facilities.
The Government was already committed to the building of the new women's prison in the grounds, she said, and "it would be hard to see any new government, whatever its colour, taking a different approach".
The prison governor, Mr John Lonergan, said it was unrealistic to talk about closing Mountjoy which, when the training unit, St Patrick's Institution, and the women's prison were included, accounted for up to 1,000 places.
It was equally simplistic to suggest you could eliminate drug use just by building new prisons, he added.