Inmates still earn just 50 cents for a day's work in Irish prisons - Dublin Inquirer
20th March 2026
This article highlights the financial struggles prisoners face in Ireland, with low gratuities and limited earnings making it difficult to buy basics or support themselves and their families. IPRT emphasised that these inadequate payments, combined with high costs and barriers to addiction and mental health supports, leave prisoners vulnerable and reliant on family assistance. IPRT called for fairer rates to ensure prisoners can cover essential needs, participate meaningfully in prison work, and prepare for life after release.
Read the full article here.
Related items:
- Building more prisons is not the answer to overcrowding The Irish Penal Reform Trust outlines a more progressive and cost-effective approach
- Prison officers to be issued with body cameras, batons amid rise in violence
- Prison overcrowding group to meet after capacity crisis warning
- IPRT Submission to the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on the fourth Universal Periodic Review of Ireland
- Crime and class Who really ends up behind bars in Ireland?
