More than 700 prison officers will leave the prison service and the Maze will be closed in the next few months, according to the annual report of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, published yesterday. By next Friday, 88 paramilitary prisoners be released from the Maze, leaving only 16 inmates inside. Some of them will be released in the coming months and it is hoped that the remainder will be transferred to Maghaberry Prison.
Between now and September, 733 prison officers will accept voluntary redundancy. By March next year a further 50 officers will accept redundancy. There were no forced layoffs. Redundancy payments depended on length of service but those with a reasonable number of years in the service received a lump sum of up to two years' pay plus pension payments. It is understood that RUC officers taking redundancy will be offered lump sums of three years' pay.
Up to the end of March this year, redundancy payments cost the British government £130 million in a year - the same amount that it cost to run the prison service.
The head of the North's Prison Officers' Association, Mr Finlay Spratt, said his association felt that members were short-changed in terms of redundancy payments. However, he conceded that individual members were happy to participate in the scheme.
Mr Spratt also complained that prison officers did not have a rehabilitation and retraining scheme funded by the British government - unlike the RUC. By next Friday the North's overall prison population will have dropped by over 800 since the IRA ceasefire in 1994. In 1994 the prison population was 1,900. By Friday, that figure will be just under 1,100. When the Belfast Agreement was signed in April 1998 there were 520 paramilitary inmates in the Maze. By Friday there will be 16.
A prisons spokesman said the authorities will consider whether to use the Maze for another function or raze it to the ground. Suggestions that it could become a training academy for the new police service, or some form of theme park are believed to have been rejected.
Mr Robin Halward, director general of the North's prison service, described last year as one of "considerable change and upheaval".
The SDLP justice spokesman, Mr Alex Attwood, welcomed confirmation that the Maze is to close. "In symbolic terms this represents a feature of the past which must not be a part of the future," he said.
"It is also appropriate at this time to acknowledge the sacrifices of prison officers, some of whom were targeted and killed in the course of their duties,"
