Rising levels of sick leave and overtime in the Prison Service are costing the State millions each year, the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said yesterday.
He told members of the Prison Officers' Association at their annual conference in Waterford that overtime levels were "unsustainable", while the "worrying increase" in sick leave also had to be addressed.
He also rejected a call by the association's president, Mr Eugene Dennehy, for mandatory sentences for inmates found guilty of attacking prison officers.
Mr Dennehy said prison officers had gone on sick leave because of serious injury sustained during the course of their work.
The issue of sick leave, he said, had for too long been used "as a stick with which to beat prison officers".
Mr O'Donoghue said that last year more than 60,000 days of sick leave had been recorded in the service, which employs 3,200 prison officers.
Some 20 per cent of the total overtime expenditure of €55.3 million was attributable to absences arising from sick leave.
He told journalists later that a small minority of prison officers was taking an inordinate amount of sick leave, and the situation was untenable.
There were a number of options open to the Prison Service, including getting medical assessments of those who were "habitually sick". It could be, he said, that such people should not be working in the service and should be receiving disability allowances.
Mr Dennehy said there were a number of reasons prison officers had had to take sick leave, including serious assault sustained on duty.
They had also been taken hostage and been the victims of needle injuries and human bites, requiring tests for HIV and hepatitis.
"Prison officers have been placed on sick leave because they were attacked when off duty merely because they are prison officers.
"Prison officers have been placed on sick leave to deal with the trauma experienced after attacks on their families and homes." One officer, he said, had recently had a contract taken out on his life because he worked in the Prison Service.
He also claimed the sick leave figures were distorted by the inclusion of days when officers were off duty.
"This is intolerable and deeply infuriating to our members, especially to those who have been the victims of the serious circumstances I have already described." Lengthy and mandatory prison sentences, he said, should be introduced for those found guilty of attacking, organising or participating at level in attacks on prison officers or their families.
Mr O'Donoghue, however, said the law at present ensured that anybody convicted of attacking a prison officer must receive a consecutive sentence, to be added to whatever time they were already serving.
He had introduced mandatory sentences for drug traffickers, because of the pervasive threat they posed to society, but he believed there could be constitutional difficulties in extending mandatory sentences further. They would not be acceptable to the courts, which would see them as an unwarranted interference in their discretion in handing down sentences.
Mr O'Donoghue said overtime levels were also posing a serious problem. Last year's expenditure on overtime of €55.3 million was an increase of 12.7 per cent on the previous year, and the upward trend was continuing.
