A chara, - Sean Aylward (August 29th) took issue with some figures concerning the prison system highlighted in my letter of the previous day.
Extraordinarily, Mr Aylward now defends the excessive cost of our prison system by attempting to invalidate my international comparisons using an economies of scale argument. If this is so, why, on April 21st 2001, did he write the following in a letter to his staff concerning the cost of running the Irish prison system?
I quote: "This cost is grossly out of line with all international comparisons. If the present escalating trend is not seriously corrected, then the out-turn figure for overtime for the year 2001 will seriously exceed last year's figure of €38.6 million. This represents a major crisis for the prison service which must be addressed." Overtime now costs €55.3 million. I rest my case.
In his letter, Mr Aylward also acknowledges that he, as head of the prison system, can only provide us with "an estimate" for the recidivism rates in Ireland. (It is hardly surprising that he chooses a more conservative estimate than I did!) But why an estimate only? Why not figures?
Mr Aylward has unwittingly raised the long-standing issue of a democratic deficit within the Irish prison system - the lack of an adequate statistical database, essential to the management and planning of any penal system. The last annual report on prisons, published in December 2000, covered the years 1995-1998. The information in this Report was even less comprehensive and less informative than the previous annual report for 1994 - which was published in 1997!
In short, I stand over all the figures contained in my letter with one exception. The figure of €500 million spent on overtime ought to have read €50 million. This was a "typo". Yours, etc.,
Dr VALERIE BRESNIHAN,
Bloomfield Avenue,
Dublin 4.