Sir, - It makes depressing reading to see the Minister for Justice commit to the building of 700 new prison places. I am sure the Governor of Mountjoy, John Lonergan, will testify that those places will be filled by people from poor socio-economic backgrounds and not by others whose crimes are revealed on a daily basis at the tribunals.
Is this to be the response of the Government to the growing levels of inequality in Ireland that have been fuelled in the recent past by his colleague in Government, Charlie McCreevy, whose budgets in the past have benefitted the rich at the expense of the poor? - Yours, etc.,
Colm O'Brien, Sandymount Road, Dublin 4.