The current dispute in the prisons is the result of 30 years' abdication of political responsibility, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent.
The discussions in the Labour Relations Committee between the Prison Service and the Prison Officers' Association have been adjourned. There is no date for resumption and little prospect of an early resolution of the dispute about overtime.
The stakes are high for both sides. From the time he took office the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has made it clear he sees the ending of the overtime culture in the prison service as essential to reform of the criminal justice system. If he does not achieve his objective, no amount of legislative reform will remove the taint of failure from his term of office.
For the prison officers, who have taken out mortgages and built lifestyles on the basis of these high levels of overtime, the issue is not only loss of earnings into the future for some of their members (not all want to work long overtime) but their influence over the way the prisons are run.
On the face of it the current situation seems absurd. The ratio of prison officers to prisoners is more than one-to-one, by far the highest in the world. In neighbouring EU countries, such as the UK and France, the ratio is about one to three.
Yet this ratio is not sufficient to run the prisons without resorting to enormous levels of overtime, about two million hours last year. Nor does it mean that prisoners have exceptional levels of service. In Ireland they spend three hours a day more in their cells than in the UK, which has two-thirds less prison staff.
Irish prison officers are also the best paid in the world. Basic salary starts at €24,500 and rises to €34,000 over 13 years. In 2002 each officer earned €19,000 a year in overtime on average, and this is likely to have exceeded €20,000 last year.
To these figures must be added a variety of allowances, 23 in all, including a rent allowance of €3,564 payable to all officers. Other allowances depend on the duties different officers perform. For example, there is an allowance of €2,241 for those on gate duty in Mountjoy, or those who carry out searches or assist in the school, tuck shop or kitchen, and an "environment" allowance of €1,349 in Portlaoise and Spike Island. Retirement with a pension of half salary (for which most allowances are included) is paid after 30 years.
Under the new proposals an officer on the first point of the scale would earn €44,512, including overtime and allowances, rising to €64,808. There will also be a once-off lump sum of €12,000 payable over three years, to soften the blow of the loss of variable overtime.
This compares well with teachers, who start at €24,000 and rise to €46,000 after 25 years, and nurses, who start at €19,000 and rise to €35,000 after 13 years. Both have four years' third-level education and training.
No one disputes the fact that a prison officer's work can be stressful and sometimes dangerous. They work anti-social hours, and can be on call at any time. It is not an easy job, and it has been rendered more difficult by the state of Irish prisons. The older ones are Victorian institutions, built with the conviction that prisoners' time was best spent in solitary and prayerful contemplation of their misdeeds. So there are no communal areas, and prisoners not only have to slop out, but eat their meals alone in their cells, requiring officers to supervise their movements in and out. But this does not explain the prisoner-officer ratio and the overtime. These go back to the expansion of the prison service in the 1970s and 1980s, from a base in the 1960s of 450 prisoners and 330 staff.
The Northern Troubles brought a new kind of inmate, IRA prisoners familiar with weapons and prepared to use any means to escape, including helicopters. The 1977 Fianna Fáil manifesto promised to recruit 300 more prison officers, doubling the numbers overnight. Many were from trade union backgrounds, and brought a new militancy to the Prison Officers' Association. Tensions in the prisons were high, and officers worked long hours of overtime, which was compulsory if deemed necessary by management. The association challenged the compulsion in the High Court and lost, losing again in the Supreme Court.
"People grew to know and love overtime," said the director of the Prison Service, Mr Sean Aylward. "It was extremely difficult to devise a system without it. Staff who know if they get back to prison with a prisoner at 2.30 rather than 2 p.m. will earn more and are not going to hurry." A symptom of how invidious the system was lies in the fact that assistant and deputy governors are also paid overtime.
A fundamental weakness of the system was that power rested with the Department of Justice, not the prison governors, who knew what was needed on the ground, but could be over-ruled by civil servants in the Department. For example, some years ago there was a dispute in St Patrick's over staffing levels. The governor was opposed to any increase, but he was over-ruled and four or five extra staff were approved.
On another occasion an attempt to transfer prison officers from Loughan House in Co Cavan was abandoned following an intervention from a locally based Minister. This has led to a situation where an officer cannot be transferred from St Patrick's Institution to Mountjoy, effectively next door, without the agreement of the Prison Officers' Association.
Mr Aylward acknowledges the historical difficulties. "The prison unit in the Department of Justice was so small, the POA, the best-resourced union in Ireland, ran rings around them. It takes a lot of resources to sort it out." Governors are now involved alongside Prison Service staff in negotiations.
Issues of manning, flexibility, and the use of technology are all part of the present discussions. For example, according to Mr Aylward, a cell-van (with individual cells in it), which would allow a number of prisoners to be escorted to court by a few prison officers, rather than one per prisoner, has been lying idle for years because there has been no agreement on its use.
Mr John Clinton, general secretary, said the association is willing to negotiate the use of new technology such as the cell-vans, but only as part of an overall package. His members, however, are concerned about being required to work extra hours over and above the overtime built into the annualised hours scheme.
"What happens if they got the figures wrong?" he asked. "They've said they'll give us time off in lieu. But we might never get the time back. In the UK the prison officers have 500,000 hours in lieu built up. We won't go in to work extra hours without recompense."
Prison management clearly feels this would pave the way for another explosion of overtime by those who exploit the current system. History shows they are right to worry.
Dr Paul O'Mahony, an expert on Irish prisons, wrote as far back as 1994 that recruitment between 1988 and 1991 intended to reduce overtime led to an increase of 61 per cent in pay costs, only 11 per cent of which resulted from the increased numbers.
He has more fundamental concerns about the present situation, however. In an attempt to reduce overtime costs - and undoubtedly also put pressure on the Prison Officers' Association - the Minister has announced the closure of the Curragh, Spike Island, Loughan House and Shelton Abbey. If there is no quick resolution, they will be reopened with non-prison officer staff and under different management. The latter two are open prisons, containing mainly vulnerable and compliant prisoners, and Spike Island deals with young offenders.
"These were some of the best things in the service," said Dr O'Mahony. "They will no longer be part of the normal system, but restricted to pre-release prisoners. It will consolidate the prison service as a high security, harsh regime. All the international studies show that the deeper the imprisonment the more damaging it is, and the less likely to rehabilitate. Rehabilitation should start on day one, not be tagged on at the end."
He is concerned that the present dispute, while perhaps inevitable, will obscure the necessary debate about the nature of the prison service, and what should be expected from prison officers. Certainly little of that has surfaced so far in the angry exchanges between the two sides.
Cost of running the prison service:
Number of prison officers: 3,200.
Ratio of prison officers to prisoners: 1:1.
Ratio of prison officers to prisoners in UK and France: 1: 3 approx.
Total Prison Service budget 2003: 300 million.
Pay including allowances and overtime: 214 million.
Top earner 2003: €138,000, of which €88,000 in overtime.
Average overtime per officer: 19,000.
Average prison officer earnings: 65,000.