On Tuesday's Déise Today, Damien was talking to John Lonergan. John is a former governor of Mountjoy prison.
He was on Déise Today this morning to talk about the 10 million euro of taxpayer's money that has been spent on prisoner compensation claims in the past five years! This is due to due to assaults and "slopping out" practices - including €100,000 to two families whose relatives died from "self-inflicted" wounds.
The figures had been given to TDs amid ongoing concerns over overcrowding and safety levels in jails.
Damien posed the question to John about the feeling that most of the general public have in that this is merely a figure that is too high to compensate prisoners considering that they themselves are in prison for a variety of crimes!
John has that some of this failure has to go down to not implementing single cell occupation. John has said that this measure was enabled years ago. However, prisoners felt that their privacy was disturbed by having to share cells with other prisoners. This has lead to more claims being made by prisoners and its 'a failure by the services to provide adequate care for the prisoners."
If you want to listen to that interview, you can click here!
https://soundcloud.com/wlrfmwaterford/deise-today-2nd-april-should-the-taxpayer-be-paying-for-prison-compensation/s-MeMaw
There was plenty of discussion on Tuesday's Déise Today apart from this, Damien was talking to Katherine Donnelly, education editor with 'The Irish Independent' about how Catholic schools are opposed to the idea of a proposed switch in patronage. Schools are being warned that by doing so, events such as Christmas, St. Patricks Day and Pancake Tuesday will no longer be celebrated!
We also talked to Ged Nash, Labour Senator and their employment spokesman on his belief that a four-day working week is the best way to generate more productivity in the workspace!
You can listen to the full version of the show here!
https://soundcloud.com/wlrfmwaterford/deise-today-tuesday-2nd-april-2019/s-tS6vh
