2025 Programme for Government
A new prison at Thornton Hall was a bad idea in 2005, and it still remains so. In the new Programme for Government —unironically titled Securing Ireland’s Future — the first objective in the Prisons and Penal Policy section is to:
Construct a new prison at Thornton Hall, expand existing prison capacity by 1,500 spaces and consider the need for a new Women’s Open Prison
While not a binding commitment for the new Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil/Independent coalition, Securing Ireland’s Future functions as a five-year roadmap for the Government and, now that campaigning has ceased, also reveals the priorities underlying their particular vision of the future.
Maybe reflective of the haste with which this 162-page document was hobbled together from multiple manifestos (and Independent wishlists), this lead objective brings further confusion as this incoming Government is a broad continuation of the previous FF/FG(Green) coalition. Is the new prison at Thornton Hall to have a capacity for 1,500 prisoners, and become the largest prison in the State? Or is the new prison to augment the additional 1,100 spaces by 2030 already announced by the former Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee TD? Will the potential women’s open prison be co-located with the closed prison at the Thornton Hall Site? Not all details can be expected at this stage but adding further confusion should be avoided.
Origins of Thornton Hall
In the mind of many policy people, Thornton Hall is synonymous with Celtic Tiger-era largesse and political solo runs. The 150-acre farm was purchased in 2005 for €29.9m, with an additional 14.7 acres being purchased by the Department of Justice for €2.1m at a later stage. In addition to servicing the site — access roads and infrastructure — the total costs had run up to €50m by 2022. At present, the site is worth €6.5m, a fraction of the State’s investment. More money seems likely to follow.
Original plans by the then Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, was for the development of a prison capable to incarcerating up to 2,200 people. This scale of project would dwarf any existing Irish prison and run counter to emerging international evidence and experience. A background factor providing momentum to the Department of Justice plans was the potential closure of Mountjoy prison, thereby freeing up prime development lands inside the canals. Plans at the time also floated the development of a ‘prison campus’ with the co-location of a women’s prison and a new Central Mental Hospital (since then, opened in Portrane in 2022).
Ultimately, the super prison stalled not from a change of policy but due to the global financial crash and subsequent budgetary crisis which Ireland experienced in the late 2000s. In recent years, the Thornton Hall site has been in the news regularly as a part of the solution to the various public crises which Ireland is facing. In 2019, the Department of Justice offered a large swathe of the site to the Land Development Agency to develop housing, while maintaining a portion if required for a future prison. This seems to have stalled, illustrative of its isolated location. And last year, a license agreement was reached between Departments to develop a tented camp on the site for over 1,000 male asylum seekers, until it was quashed by a High Court judicial review. The symbolism of this latter attempted utilisation was striking.
What We Said Originally?
The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, and various other prison advocacy bodies such as the Irish Penal Reform Trust, were vocal in their opposition to the initial plans to develop the proposed prison campus at Thornton Hall.
Looking back through our JCFJ Working Notes archives to see what we said originally, the Centre addressed the Thornton Hall prison plans in back to back issues. As the political arguments were being made for the advantages of this expansion of prison places and organisational effiencies, Tony O’Riordan SJ —Director of the JCFJ— was unequivocal in a 2007 essay that the “prospect of imprisoning, on one site, some distance outside Dublin, 1,400 men, women, and children, many of whom will be among the most vulnerable in our society, might be equally referred to as a ‘penal colony.’” The Centre’s concerns were three-fold: any upgrade of conditions for prisoners should not be accompanied by an expansion of prison places; large prison design leads to increase of inter-prisoner violence and ‘protection orders’; and the relocation of the semi-open Training Unit (now a closed unit) and the women’s prison to a site far outside of the city.
A Working Notes editorial, a year later in a standalone issue on Thornton Hall prison, argued that, alongside the increased incarceration, there is a “grave danger that its [Thornton Hall prison] existence will also serve to constrain the development of more enlightened approaches to both prison policy and forensic mental health services.” Contibutors to the issue underlined how the location would “pose considerable difficulties for families wishing to visit those detained there, threatening the maintenance of family ties, which are widely recognised as critical to rehabilitation and reintegration.” Interestingly, Eoin Carroll observed that the isolated location is justified by Government due to its assumption that every household in Ireland has access to a car, when ownership is much less prevelant among poorer families who make up the majority journeying to our prisons.
Has Anything Changed?
While little appears to have changed in the minds of the Irish political class and senior officials in the Department of Justice, things have changed internationally. As is their bread and butter for policy development, we can safely presume that Irish officials are up to speed based on their keen replication of UK prison policy.
In 2007, three Titan prisons were proposed in England and Wales which could incarcerate up to 2,500 people each. Following a strong backlash from prison reformers, only one Titan prison was built at HMP Berwyn in Wrexham with a capacity for 2,200. Originally proposed as a Category C resettlement prison, it has functioned as a remand and Category B prison, with poor health outcomes, inability to retain experienced staff, and rising levels of violence.
Cost runs on these projects are unpredictable and essentially become an open cheque book on an approach to prisons with no evidence base for improving outcomes or providing dignified conditions. In Glasgow, the new prison to replace HMP Barlinnie will cost £1bn by 2028, more than ten times the original estimate in 2014. This should raise an alarm with any Department official proposing this trajectory as the Irish track record on cost overruns on capital projects is erratic. Scottish penologists estimated that the overall cost of the new prison would build over 6,000 affordable housing units, more than four for each prisoner place.
As a solution to Belgian prisons being some of the most overcrowded in Europe, their Government built Haren mega-prison to replace delapidated prisons in Saint-Gillies and Berkendael. A year after opening, the Haren project was deemed a failure with some prisoners being returned to their original prisons. Opposition to the original plans focused on the ecological problems and the increased isolation of prisoners from their families, due to its distance from a population centre and easy transport routes.
Considering its political architects, Securing Ireland’s Future is unlikely to progressively realise a more just society but all active policy proposals which will increase injustice must be rejected. The Government must be forced to justify this reheated prison plan in light of our decades-long housing crisis; our climate and biodiversity crisis; children’s rights to maintain contact with a parent in prison; and prisons’ ever-decreasing ability to even minimally realise its stated aims of rehabilitation and reintegration. And then resign it to the history book of bad ideas once and for all.
Otherwise, the only future that will be secured is one of prison expansion and punishment as many remained unhoused and our climate transition regresses.
