Prison Service

Thursday, 3 October 2024

Questions (129)

Chris Andrews

Question:

129. Deputy Chris Andrews asked the Minister for Justice the number of drug overdoses in Irish prisons in 2023 and 2024 to date, in tabular form. [39471/24]

View answer

Written answers

I wish to advise the Deputy that it is not possible to provide the information requested as overdoses are not recorded centrally and such an exercise would require a manual examination of an inordinate number of individual records which is not possible given the current pressure on staff resources.

The Deputy may also wish to know that the Self Harm Assessment and Data Analysis System records incidents of intentional overdoses in Irish Prisons, however, the data for 2022 and 2023 has not yet been collated. The Irish Prison Service recently published the 2020 and 2021 Self Harm Assessment and Data Analysis on their website, at www.irishprisons.ie. The delay in publishing these reports is due the Covid-19 pandemic. It is expected that the data for 2022 and 2023 will be published in early 2025.

I can further advise the Deputy that a new centralised data collection system is now in place to record all overdose incidences. In addition, the Irish Prison Service has recently recruited a number of Research Assistants and are in the in process of recruiting a Research Manager. These additional resources will help collate important data on intentional and accidental overdoses in prisons.