Madam, - It is quite incredible that on the same day as the Prison Officers' Association is trying to find a solution at the Labour Relations Commission, Minister McDowell should be closing prisons.
This type of provocative action is seriously threatening the success of the present talks as no organisation can allow itself to be bullied in this way.
What is happening is quite straightforward. The Prison Service and the Minister are attempting to harass and bully prison officers into accepting a plan that has been rejected by 99.4 per cent of the members.
This type of over-the-top Thatcherite approach will not work and the Prison Officers' Association has the support of its members in resisting such an outdated approach to industrial relations.
It is now clear that the management agenda, at all times, was to close and privatise prisons. This runs entirely contrary to stated Government policy. Prison officers are astonished that the revolving door system is now back in vogue in prisons and in some cases prisoners are sleeping on mattresses on prison corridors.
There are also several hundred prisoners on our streets who have not returned from temporary release.
If a major dispute now emerges - and this appears to be what management wants - it will set the Prison Service back decades. With crime increasing in many sectors surely this is not in the best interests of Irish society.
We call on the Minister to focus again on the talks process, which has proven difficult but some progress has been made. There are more benefits to using the talks process than attempting to flog to Prison officers a plan that is dead in the water.
Prison officers are involved in the most stressful work known and this is well established by independent research. They are often the victims of vicious assaults in the workplace and must live constantly with the threat of attacks on their homes. They work in prisons at night and weekends when most other workers are enjoying family and social time.
This is a difficult job and yet management and the Minister are displaying scant regard for the commitment shown around the clock day after day. - Yours, etc.,
GERRY WILSON, Vice President, Prison Officers Association, Merrion Square, Dublin 2.