Karl Dalton
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The rest of that building could be refurbished.
We asked for that, we called for that to be done last year and we're calling again this year.
We need a number of places like that.
There's the empty site in the D block.
Explain that to me again.
It's the E block, is it, in Portlaoise?
The E block in Portlaoise has four landings.
There's five prisoners on E1.
That would be political decisions.
They're political prisoners.
The rest of the business slows down.
I see from your own figures in Portlaoise, well, in the Midlands Prison, there are 160 prisoners sleeping on floors.
Absolutely.
In the Midlands prisons, you have 226 excess prisoners in the system on what it's meant to hold.
In Portlaoise itself, which is next door, there's 83 extra prisoners in the system.
And meanwhile, the E Block.
And next to the E Block is the old D Block site, and that is a vacant site.
It's empty.
And instead of building an open centre, there are the places we need to build urgently.