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CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 78-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

CROSS BORDER CO-OPERATION

 

 

Wednesday 10 December 2008

MR PAT MAGUIRE and MR PHILIP O'NEILL

Evidence heard in Public Questions 111 - 145

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 10 December 2008

Members present

Christopher Fraser

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Mr Denis Murphy

Dr Alasdair McDonnell

David Simpson

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In the absence of the Chairman, Mr Stephen Hepburn took the Chair

 

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Witnesses: Mr Pat Maguire, Governor 1, Operations Directorate and Mr Philip O'Neill, Head of Learning and Development, Northern Ireland Prison Service, gave evidence

Q111 Mr Hepburn: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Could I welcome you to Parliament and to this meeting of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in which we are considering a report on cross border co-operation and your particular field is one place we want to take an interest in. Unfortunately, the chairman is absent today. He has an illness and he has put his apologies in, but we thought it best to go ahead with this meeting. Why is co-operation necessary between the Prison Services of Northern Ireland and the Republic? What benefits do we get from it?

Mr Maguire: If I can start. We have links developed between all prison services, both in Scotland and in England and Wales and obviously with the Irish Prison Service. Being on the land mass of Ireland, it is an obvious partner to engage in. We do have a number of strong links with all services, but we also have strong links with the Irish Prison Service which has developed over the last number of years in areas of mutual interest. We have, of course, a twice yearly meeting between the senior management of the Irish Prison Service and the Northern Ireland Prison Service. The last meeting was in June of this year. We meet to discuss areas of mutual interest in certain operational areas. We visit each other's establishments and that is the formal side but we also have, during the course of normal business during the year, visits both from some of their personnel to our prisons and headquarters and also our staff going down to see some of their prisons, training facilities and so forth. The benefits to be accrued are looking outward as a prison service rather than staying inward, so it is very important that we try and keep abreast with other jurisdictions that are involved in the same business as we are in. Rather than us try and reinvent the wheel there may be ideas and benefits which can be gleaned from looking at the Irish Prison Service and the English and the Scots. Probably if they were here they would say the same, they have gleaned a lot from us. There are a lot of mutual benefits to be achieved from an operational policy perspective and we have seen tangible benefits in that in recent times.

Q112 Mr Hepburn: That is more or less a sharing of good practice and learning from each other. Is there any co-operation in operational activities?

Mr Maguire: Yes, there are. I will pass over to my colleague in a minute with regard to training. Obviously we have visited their facilities on certain issues to do with governor grade training, officer training, they have looked at ours and engaged in training of their passive drugs dogs and so forth. We can pass on our good practice to them and it is useful to have a consistency of approach in all these matters. We are in a position clearly to learn, because that is the ball game we are in, but we do not have to sort of start from scratch and reinvent the wheel but we can take up areas of good practice from other jurisdictions, particularly the Irish Prison Service, and be in a position to take those on board in full or adapt them to our own particular needs.

Q113 Mr Hepburn: Have you noticed any significant differences between operational activities or practices both north and south of the border?

Mr Maguire: There are certain things which will be different given the nature of the jurisdiction and the rules and regulations and standing orders that will pertain to a particular jurisdiction, but we would be looking at areas like searching, areas as we mentioned about training, what type of subject areas would you cover with training, and my colleague will cover that shortly. What we want to be in a position to do is to learn what we can and adapt that to our own particular needs.

Q114 Mr Fraser: Can I get this right, you said just now it was meeting twice yearly?

Mr Maguire: That is correct.

Q115 Mr Fraser: Who attends that meeting?

Mr Maguire: From the Irish Prison Service it will be Brian Purcell, who is the Director-General of the Irish Prison Service and his senior team, Willy Connolly, who is the Director of Operations for the Irish Prison Service, and there will be other people from their estates and other policy areas.

Q116 Mr Fraser: From Northern Ireland?

Mr Maguire: From the Northern Ireland Prison Service it will be the Director of the Prison Service in Northern Ireland, Robin Masefield, and his senior team and maybe some other individual senior managers who are brought along to discuss particular subject areas.

Q117 Mr Fraser: If it is twice yearly and it happened in June 2008 there is one about to happen now?

Mr Maguire: I think it probably will be in the New Year.

Q118 Mr Fraser: Are you able to tell us what the priorities will be for that next meeting?

Mr Maguire: No, I am not at this point.

Q119 Mr Fraser: Is it something you can submit to us separately from this meeting?

Mr Maguire: Yes, we can find out and write to you on that matter.

Q120 Mr Fraser: Clearly there may be some significant issues you need to deal with in confidence I assume, is that right?

Mr Maguire: There will be areas of interest which will be confidential, yes.

Q121 Mr Fraser: Can you tell us anything about the key areas that were discussed in the past. You talked about training and personnel issues, can you be more specific? You mentioned those also in answer to Mr Hepburn's question about mutual benefits. Could you elaborate upon that and tell us what they are and how everyone works together in building that dialogue?

Mr Maguire: If I can talk about one area in particular and then maybe pass on to my colleague to do with training because that is a particularly relevant area at this point in time. If we go back to the last meeting that we held in the middle of this year, one of the areas of significance was their estate strategy and our estate strategy in so far as we are in the process of developing our prison estate, some of which, as the Committee will be aware, is in dire need of replacement and refurbishment. The Irish Prison Service have been developing their estate and they have one major project which is of significance to us in NIPS which is their development of Thornton Hall which is a new prison complex which they are hoping to build in the not too distant future. It is quite a significant size prison. The interest that the Northern Ireland Prison Service had in their experience was to glean lessons about how they went about their procurement, their design and so forth, because they were more advanced. We are hoping, as the Committee may be aware, to develop a new prison on the existing Magilligan site.

Q122 Mr Fraser: If there is a joint estate strategy established and conversations are taking place about best practice, I am finding it slightly difficult to understand when there is a completely different jurisdiction, different sentencing rules and a different regime in the Republic than there is in Northern Ireland. Whilst personally I think it is a clever idea and a very good idea that you talk about best practice, ultimately the decisions that are taken as a consequence of that come down to funding and wider issues where you may find you want things but cannot deliver on because they have different funding in their prison service than we have, is that right?

Mr Maguire: If I can just pick you up on a point you made there. It is not a joint strategy; it is a sharing of experience as opposed to a joint strategy. The Northern Ireland Prison Service has its own estate strategy to take it forward over the next 10 to 15 years. If we take the development of the Northern Ireland Prison Service estate, we make visits to Scotland. This year we visited a new prison in Scotland Addiewell which is being developed, we have been to Bronzefield, we have been to other prisons, Cornton Vale for example we have been to in Scotland as well, we are looking at areas that are being developed which we hope we can learn some things from. That can be from an operations design perspective or it could look at security infrastructure, staff facilities, any number of areas, and as a consequence certainly this year we were very keen to look at Thornton Hall. There was a presentation by the Irish Prison Service on how they developed from a blank sheet of paper right through to where they are, which is ready to go for the build. In terms of the development of Magilligan prison we are at the early stages. We are into procuring a design team and a programme manager to manage the major programme of the development of the new prison at Magilligan.

Q123 Mr Fraser: In that respect, the particular project you have just referred to, is that likely to be inhibited by the credit crunch and the financial constraints we find ourselves under?

Mr Maguire: As we have not got to that stage ---

Q124 Mr Fraser: Would you anticipate it might be affected?

Mr Maguire: Naturally, with the present economic climate and going forward, there are obviously going to be challenges in terms of capital funding for many, many projects across the public sector. However, just last year we completed the strategic business case to define the need and I think those Members of the Committee who have visited Magilligan in the past can see that it is very clear there is a real need for development on that site.

Mr Fraser: May I also just add that I have to go to another meeting, so forgive me for leaving. Thank you very much for your answers.

Q125 Mr Hepburn: I have one question on cross border movement of offenders. What systems are in place for alerting authorities in other jurisdictions of the forthcoming release of potentially dangerous prisoners?

Mr Maguire: There are not any formal arrangements in place between our two prison services on the release, if you are referring, for example, to, say, a serious sex offender, within the Irish jurisdiction coming back to Northern Ireland, who perhaps has an address in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Prison Service would not normally be informed because there is no particular need for the prison service to be informed. There may very well be arrangements between the Gardaí and the PSNI to inform them that a serious sex offender is coming within the Northern Ireland jurisdiction, but certainly there are not any formalised arrangements between the two prison services as such at this point.

Q126 David Simpson: Some time ago a joint working group was set up between the two police forces and the prison services in relation to sex offenders travelling between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Could you outline what progress has been made within that working group, if any?

Mr Maguire: I am afraid I cannot give you an answer on that. I am not sighted on that particular aspect. It is something we could write to you about.

Q127 Dr McDonnell: I would like to touch on the women's prison issue. Before I do that I would like to congratulate you on the sharing you are doing there because I think the work you do is difficult and prisons are evolving and while we may ask taxing questions here from my perspective it is in no way critical of what you are doing. Does the partnership extend to the working arrangements that you have in any aspects of the women's prisons? We are aware of the Ash House stresses and pressures at Hydebank and we saw the Dochas Centre at Mountjoy. Can the co-operation in any way move us to a point where we will have a Dochas Centre?

Mr Maguire: Yes. We have had a number of people who have visited from the Northern Ireland Prison Service to the Dochas Centre at Mountjoy. In fact, at the meeting which took place earlier this year with the Irish Prison Service, as part of their Thornton Hall development they have got a provision for a female facility to replace the Dochas Centre, whenever they decide to build that, and close the Dochas Centre. I think it is a case of we have been developing a strategic outline case as part of an overall female offender strategy which the Minister, Paul Goggins, has been the driver behind to bring forward an overarching strategy. Within that will be the development of a strategic outline case on the provision of a new facility for women to replace Ash House. That is one part of the overall strategy for dealing with offenders. I have visited the Dochas Centre myself and we have seen the very good work that goes on there. There are pressures, obviously with population pressures and complexity at Ash House, but the staff and management are doing an excellent job in managing that process. We are intent on looking at best practice, and that is why we went to the Dochas Centre because there are some very good practices there and some of the ethos in the Dochas we would like to replicate. If we can move forward and we are able to get a new female facility then we would be in a position to start afresh. Obviously the issue at the moment is the fact that Ash House is within a male young offenders' institution which is not entirely desirable and we would aspire for something different. We have gone down the road at this point in time of looking at and producing a strategic outline case for the Minister in order to further that particular agenda.

Q128 Dr McDonnell: There is mention about the joint training of dogs. Would you outline to us how that might work and how it is beneficial?

Mr Maguire: I will pass over to my colleague in regard to this particular aspect.

Mr O'Neill: The training of the Irish Canine Unit is something we have been helping out with since its inception. When you ask how it is working, the simple answer is it is working very well. To date we have trained ten passive dogs, there will be six more passing out tomorrow, which gives them a very strong nucleus of passive dogs to stem the flow of drugs into the prison environment. The benefit from our dog handlers' point of view is multi-fold. It is about sharing of best practice. We have a drug problem in the Northern Ireland Prison Service but it is nothing compared with the drug problem they have in the Irish Prison Service. What we are learning from the dog handlers coming up and working with our staff and working with dog handlers from the Northern Ireland Prison Service are the new ways in which these traffickers are trying to bring drugs into prison, therefore it allows our dogs and our handlers to be aware and very conscious of that when they are doing their work. Apart from the sharing of information at various levels on this, spin-offs from that have been happening. For example, we are already looking at the breeding of dogs. Dogs can be very costly, particularly getting the right dogs in place. Not just with the Irish Prison Service, but yesterday we were speaking with the PSNI about a dog breeding programme for particular breeds which would be very useful for all services. It is at these differing levels that it appears to be working.

Q129 Mr Murphy: Just continuing on that answer, it is obviously a very important aspect of the joint operation. Do you find that the expertise currently is in the South with regard to the training of dogs and drugs or is it roughly equal between both sides?

Mr O'Neill: No, the Irish Prison Service Canine Unit is still in its infancy, it was only established during the summer. I would recognise that the expertise with regard to dogs, particularly passive dog training, still lies within the Northern Ireland Prison Service and at our training headquarters at Millisle. We are at the level now where we are going to be training the trainers who will be taking the Irish dog section forward. So not only does it help share best practice but what they have done in the Republic of Ireland for the Irish Prison Service is that they have adopted our policies and procedures so they mirror our policy and procedures and will do the same for training which means the dogs and the training could be interchangeable should it be required.

Q130 Mr Murphy: On a purely practical side, would the people coming from the South, the trainers, bring their own dogs and would both be trained by your service?

Mr O'Neill: The sourcing of dogs has been particularly challenging, that is why we are looking at a type of breeding programme. At the minute we are sourcing dogs from both North and South. Because they are passive dogs they are a little bit easier to pick up Labrador and Spaniel type dogs. We will face greater difficulties when we are looking at German Shepherds for their particular role in the Canine Unit. At the moment the dogs come from across Ireland from various places, including some of the shelters.

Q131 Mr Murphy: You are actively pursuing the idea of having your own breeding programme for dogs?

Mr O'Neill: Yes.

Q132 Mr Murphy: For both yourselves and the police service?

Mr O'Neill: Yes.

Q133 Mr Murphy: Sounds like an excellent idea. Are there any other joint programmes that you are operating between yourselves and the Republic?

Mr O'Neill: There are no specific joint programmes that we are operating but we do share training best practice. From a training point of view, we would not have an exclusive link with the Irish Prison Service. The link we have with the Irish Prison Service would be equal to that we have with the Scottish Prison Service and the English Prison Service at Newbold Revel, their training headquarters. Through that the four heads of training would meet once a year to discuss pertinent issues and to share best practice. The next meeting of that is in Newbold Revel towards the end of January where, again, the heads of the four prison training services will meet. That is the level it is at at the minute. There has been sharing of people attending training courses but not on a large scale.

Q134 Mr Murphy: Do you have an officer exchange programme?

Mr O'Neill: We do not have a formal officer exchange programme. We have exchanged some officers to help with particular programmes. For example, we had a review of our Section 75 implementation and that review was headed up by a governor from the Irish Prison Service. We would have that on an on-going basis but not a formal basis.

Q135 Mr Murphy: Would you have officers travelling to the mainland, to English and Scottish prisons as well?

Mr O'Neill: We would. We would share quite a bit with the Scottish Prison Service, particularly in search techniques and in some of the management programmes that we run. We have developed links with the English Prison Service at Newbold Revel for a particular leadership programme they are developing and we will be sending governors from the Northern Ireland Prison Service to that. We have developed links with the Irish Prison Service with the Dochas Centre for the women's programme and I know that from a training point of view we are sending staff from Hydebank Wood to the Dochas Centre to participate in some of the training programmes which would be specific to women's issues. We are also bringing the English Prison Service to Northern Ireland in January to deliver a particular programme they have for the management of women prisoners.

Q136 Dr McDonnell: I want to come back to any joint work which might have been done to increase human resource capacity on equality or diversity of cultural activities? Has there been any activity on that agenda?

Mr O'Neill: Not on a formal basis. I have personally gone to Portlaois where the Irish Prison Service have their training headquarters and I have seen some of the material that they have and we have worked with them on the material that we have, particularly on the area of human rights and diversity. We have also worked with the Scottish Prison Service and have developed and will be adopting a particular human rights' training package that they have, which is an IT package. We are developing it and we will be rolling that out across the Northern Ireland Prison Service, but it will be specifically human rights, and we will look to be doing something similar on diversity. It is very much along the lines of creating greater awareness and creating greater respect within the service.

Q137 Dr McDonnell: Do you feel we are increasing capacity on either side of the border in that human rights diversity pitch?

Mr O'Neill: I thoroughly believe we are because the sharing of best practice, particularly when it comes to training programmes, any training programme you will lift off the shelf now at the Northern Ireland Prison Service College and if you go to the Irish Prison Service College, the core element of every training programme we deliver looks at human rights and diversity, and that is from new entrants right through to senior management programmes. That is the core of those programmes at present.

Q138 Dr McDonnell: Just one final point, I suppose it is a million dollar question, is there any system in place for personnel exchanges for short periods North or South?

Mr Maguire: There has not been any formalised setting up of it. I can recall some years ago I had some links with a governor down there in Wheatfield Prison, so there has been over the years ad hoc but there are not any formalised arrangements. That is not to say we would not look in future to secondments to Scotland, England and the Republic of Ireland.

Q139 Dr McDonnell: You think that would be of value?

Mr Maguire: I think it is of value to have secondments, not just within your own sphere of expertise but into the private sector and other public sector and voluntary sector bodies.

Q140 David Simpson: I would like to deal with the question of vulnerable prisoners. You will be aware of the review conducted into safer custody of vulnerable prisoners. Could you give us some indication of what lessons were learnt from other jurisdictions, including the Irish Republic?

Mr Maguire: I am afraid at this point I really could not give you an answer. It is slightly beyond my remit as such. Perhaps we could update you later.

Q141 David Simpson: I would appreciate that. It seemed I had all the questions on the reports, I apologise for that. If you would give us something, it would be of great benefit to us. Also, Mr Hepburn, my last question is in relation to the mental health services. This is not a report so you may be able to answer me on this one. What lessons can be learnt from the practice in the Irish Republic on the care and treatment of prisoners who have a mental illness?

Mr Maguire: What I could say is within the Northern Ireland Prison Service we do have a number of prisoners who suffer from mental illness and personality disorder.

Q142 David Simpson: Some politicians are like that too by the way!

Mr Maguire: As Members may be aware, a personality disorder is not covered under the Northern Ireland Mental Health Act, although many people would like it to be, and that is something which may be useful to be taken up going forward. In terms of links with the South in this area, we are aware that they have the same difficulties as we do, as in fact all jurisdictions do. It is a sad fact of life that a number of people do come into custody who suffer from mental illness or personality disorders, and sometimes both, and as a consequence of that the prison service is the last stop and we have to deal with that. Certainly from a Northern Ireland Prison Service perspective with the passing of responsibility for health care to the trusts this year, we hope to be able to make significant progress in the management of those. We do not have direct links with some of their strategies in the South.

Q143 Mr Hepburn: That concludes our questions this afternoon. Are there any additional points or suggestions you would like to make to go forward in our report?

Mr Maguire: No. Perhaps just to say that there are other areas we have not particularly mentioned which we are looking at with the Scots, the English and, indeed, the Irish Prison Services, things like mobile phone blocking which is a scourge of any prison system. We have links with the English service about the technology that they are trying to put in place to prevent mobile phones being used in custody because obviously that circumvents the normal PIN phone system which has monitoring and recording involved in it. Operational colleagues of mine have been in touch with the Irish Prison Service because they are looking to roll out within the Midlands Prison mobile phone blocking technology. In all jurisdictions we are looking at this, but we are making links with the South on this because they are slightly ahead of us on this because we have not got it at this point in time although we have some similar technology in terms of hand-held. We are looking at that across a whole range of areas of blocking because that prevents potentially crime being committed with mobile phones being used, some people do organise things on the outside.

Mr O'Neill: One aspect. You mentioned earlier about the credit crunch and how it was affecting issues. It is affecting areas of training, not in what we do but the speed and pace of how we are doing things. It is particularly a factor with some of the work we have been doing with the Irish Prison Service.

Mr Maguire: One final thing. The Northern Ireland Prison Service are looking at drug testing procedures and I know the Irish Prison Service are also very interested in the Northern Ireland Prison Service pilot into the use of saliva testing which we ran earlier this year, about a thousand samples pilot. It is being evaluated and hopefully will be taken forward. We are working with the Irish Prison Service on the wider anti-drug measures and substance abuse and so forth. There are these little operational lines that we are keeping in contact with because, as my colleague mentioned earlier, drug taking is a real scourge of prison services.

Q144 Dr McDonnell: Would it be too far-fetched to raise the question of a Southern Irish prisoner in a Northern prison. For instance, I was struck by the proximity of Magilligan - I am glad we are looking to rebuild Magilligan on the same site - to Donegal and I wonder if it is pie in the sky to look at prisoners being located perhaps nearer their home instead of a Southern prisoner but serving a sentence in the Northern Irish system, could or she be located in the likes of Wheatfield or could the Irish Government, for instance, place prisoners for a fee in the new Magilligan? Perhaps that is an issue for somebody other than the prison service.

Mr Maguire: It will take a lot of thought to go into that, but there are examples where prisoners in the South have come across to the Northern Ireland Prison Service. There have been a number of prisoners in recent years who have come across who have spent a long time in the southern system and as part of their resettlement have been brought into the Northern Ireland prison system.

Q145 Dr McDonnell: These are northern natives?

Mr Maguire: Yes, but they have spent a lot of time in the Republic of Ireland prison system. It is about making sure that everything is done for the right reasons and we have one or two examples in recent years where that has been effected and effected quite successfully.

Mr Hepburn: Thank you, Mr Maguire and Mr O'Neill, for taking time to come over and see us this afternoon. The prison service will obviously be a very important part of our report and once it is completed we will make sure you have a copy. Have a safe journey home and Merry Christmas.