‘Unprecedented pressures’ on jails last year
The head of the Irish Prison Service (IPS) has described 2025 as a year of “unprecedented operating pressures”.
Director general Caron McCaffrey (small picture) said that demands on the prison system reached “levels never before experienced in the State”.
She was writing in the IPS annual report, which shows that there were 5,753 people in custody by the end of 2025, compared with a total bed capacity of 4,718. This meant that the system was more than 20% above capacity.
The number of people sleeping on mattresses at the end of the year jumped by 180% from the previous year to 596.
‘Exceptional commitment’
The daily average number of people in custody rose by 9.6% to 5,417.
“Despite these challenges, staff across all prisons continued to provide safe, professional, and humane services to those in custody, demonstrating exceptional commitment in demanding circumstances,” McCaffrey stated.
She attributed the pressures on the system to a range of “system-wide” factors:
- Increased garda recruitment and activity,
- Additional judicial capacity,
- Longer periods being spent on remand,
- Increased court sittings,
- Demographic change, and
- An increase in sentence length in various offence categories.
The IPS chief said that the long-term solution to these issues was a major capital programme that was now underway and would deliver an extra 1,500 prison spaces.
An extra 187 spaces were added last year, with 65 currently planned for this year.
Cost of space
The report shows that the average annual cost of an available, staffed prison space during 2025 rose by 4.3% to €103,334.
It attributes the increase to costs resulting from higher prisoner numbers, increased capacity, inflation, and increases in payroll costs.
At the end of 2025 there were 4,031 staff in the service, with 304 recruit prison officers, 24 clerical officers, and 24 prison nurses joining the organisation during the year.
Dóchas extension
The IPS report was released as Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan signed a contract for an extension at the Dóchas Centre – the female prison at Dublin’s Mountjoy.
The Rowan House Yard Extension project will increase the prison’s capacity by 52 spaces or 30%.
Construction will start in September, with completion expected in the final quarter of 2027.