A PLAN to reduce the high level of overtime payments to prison staff was distributed to delegates at the Prison Officers' Association conference in Waterford yesterday.
The plan was drawn up by a British prison management consultant, Mr Gordon Lakes, hired by a cost review group of staff and department representatives.
Manning levels at Irish jails were "far more generous than is common elsewhere", Mr Lakes said, and a more thorough review was needed to identify further possible savings.
The review is aimed at reorganising staffing and payment schemes which brought the overtime bill for the prison service to £18 million last year, £4 million upon 1995.
In his report Mr Lakes said some assistant chief officers - a grade above the standard officer rank - "worked so many hours overtime that their gross earnings exceeded £55,000" last year.
He suggested "a system of categorisation" by which prisoners would be assessed as to the security risk they presented.
"In the absence of such systems almost all prisoners are treated as high security risks and the manning levels reflect this approach." This was manifest not only in jails, but in overtime paid for staffing courts, escorts and hospital watches, he said.
The Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, told the conference she had introduced new legislation which would "reduce the necessity for excessive movement and transporting of offenders around the country". She congratulated the prison staff involved in the peaceful conclusion of the hostage taking at Mountjoy Prison in January, and said a new scheme was being introduced to deal with the most volatile prisoners.
"This will take the form of an Alternatives to Violence Programme which will be aimed at confronting individual prisoners propensity to violence and helping them to overcome their violent tendencies," she said.
The scheme is to begin in Cork Prison in November, and will involve encouraging prisoners to visit psychiatrists and trained counsellors, including prison officers, based at the jail. It is based on "anger management" programmes studied in prisons overseas.
Mrs Owen said the scheme would be initially aimed at sex offenders in Cork Prison, although Arbour Hill Prison in Dublin would remain the primary treatment centre for the prison system's 250 sex offenders.
In his address the POA president, Mr Michael Lawton, called on the authorities to tackle the problem of "disturbed prisoners" who ought to be in psychiatric care. "The Irish Prison Service does not possess the therapeutic or treatment settings which are required to care for mentally ill people," he said. There were about 50 such prisoners in the system who should be in a new psychiatric unit, or at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum.
Mr Lawton also called on delegates to refuse to cooperate with the Independent Prisons' Board being set up by the Government to run the prison service, unless staff representatives were included on it.
Mrs Owen said afterwards that while the initial board would consist of a small number of people, staff would be fully consulted on, its activities and there was a possibility that eventually staff representatives would join the board.