The sod will shortly turn on a new female prison for 50 inmates in Limerick, the Department of Justice has confirmed.

Completion is expected within 33 months.

Glenbeigh Construction, which on Monday issued a High Court legal challenge to the awarding of the €53m contract, has agreed to the lifting of an automatic stay on the contract award, given the poor and overcrowded conditions at the jail.

The prison improvement works contract was awarded to PJ Hegarty and Co last June, following public tender.

“This project will greatly improve the living conditions for the male and female prisoners in Limerick Prison, and bring additional capacity to the system as a whole,” a department spokesman said. 

There are currently two female prisons in the state – Limerick and the Dóchas Centre in Mountjoy on Dublin’s North Circular Road.

“Significant progress” is expected on a dedicated standalone new female prison for the Munster region due to the jump in justice capital allocation from €145 million in 2018 to €241 million next year, announced in Budget 2019.

Knocked

The B division at Limerick Prison will also be knocked – its replacement will have upgraded in-cell sanitation for approximately 100 male prisoners.

Building works on the new unit for 50 female prisoners on the same site at Limerick Prison is expected to commence shortly. 

Last year, Richard Roche (assistant governor at Limerick Prison) told journalist Cathal McMahon that he would prefer to keep women prisoners local to their homes, in a large number of smaller, community-based care centres.

He believes that imprisonment at a distance from family and children has a disproportionately punitive effect on women, who mostly present a very low security risk.

The capital allocation for justice over the period 2018-2022 under the recent National Development Plan is €1,040,000 billion. The breakdown is as follows:

2018 – €145 million

2019 – €241 million

2020 – €230 million

2021 – €208 million

2022 – €216 million. 

The precise funding breakdown across various projects will be dependent on the outcome of procurement competitions but, broadly, funding will be allocated to: 

• Construction of the new Forensic Science Laboratory,
• Garda Síochána building and refurbishment, including completion of Divisional Headquarters in Galway and Kevin Street, Dublin, together with replacement of the Harcourt Street complex,
• Garda information and communications technology (ICT), including completion of the implementation of the Schengen information system, 
• Upgrades of the Garda fleet, 
• Prisons, courts and Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service ICT investment, 
• Prison building, including the redevelopment of Limerick Prison, 
• New or refurbished courthouses in a number of provincial cities and county towns.