IPRT Statement on Budget 2026

8th October 2025

Budget 2026 provides a welcome increase in Probation funding, however additional prison spaces will not solve our prison overcrowding crisis, says IPRT 

Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT), Ireland’s leading organisation campaigning for human rights in the penal system, has responded to yesterday’s Budget 2026 announcement. 

Irish Penal Reform Trust Executive Director, Saoirse Brady, said: 

“IPRT welcomes the announcement of an additional €6.7 million for the Probation Service, which represents an increase of nearly 12 per cent from last year’s allocation. This signals a clear commitment to deliver on the Programme for Government commitment to expand community-based sanctions and will support an increase in the availability and use of community alternatives to imprisonment. We particularly welcome that funding has been earmarked to provide initial staffing for the long-awaited Bail Supervision Scheme which will help to improve compliance with bail conditions and better address some of the underlying causes of offending. It is also positive to see funding allocated to expand a national supervised Temporary Release Scheme and restorative justice services.  

We reiterate that interventions like community service, probation supervision, and meaningful alternatives to custody are not only more cost-effective but are proven to deliver more positive results for individuals, their families and wider society, and can result in lower rates of reoffending. However, we also acknowledge that while the increase is welcome, it is a mere drop in the ocean in terms of the wider funding landscape when we see almost ten times that allocated to the Irish Prison Service in capital expenditure. Until we see a rebalancing of the scales, we will remain in the midst of a prison overcrowding crisis, the likes of which we have not seen before.  

Today, there are 5,547 in Irish prisons in a system with a maximum bed capacity of 4,675 people. Last night, 499 people had to sleep on mattresses placed on the ground of prison cells. This is utterly unacceptable, and IPRT has made numerous calls to the Government to address this as a matter of priority. We have consistently highlighted that the answers to prison overcrowding are not found in bricks and mortar, but in solutions that address the root causes of offending behaviour, establish community-based alternatives to short prison sentences, and invest in person-centred interventions to prevent reoffending. 

We are therefore disappointed that Budget 2026 continues to prioritise creating new prison spaces, which will not address the overcrowding crisis in either the short or the long term. Budget 2026 allocates €67.9 million in capital expenditure towards delivering 73 new prison spaces in 2026 and commencing work on an additional 470 prison spaces, with a total of approximately 1,195 spaces to be delivered by 2031. These new prison spaces are costly, will not provide any immediate relief to prison overcrowding, and will not ultimately reduce the number of people in prison, particularly those who are sentenced for short periods of time who should have been diverted rather than imprisoned. IPRT strongly disagrees that these additional spaces are proportionate to general population growth in Ireland, but rather we require a change in sentencing and policy decisions to reduce the prison population overall, something the Minister is clearly committed to. We welcome the forthcoming legislation around Community Service Orders but would also urge the expansion of other sentencing options for Judges through progressing the Criminal Justice (Community Sanctions) Bill 2014.  

International and European prison rules are clear that people in prison should, as a matter of course, be accommodated in individual cells, yet with the pressure currently on the system, shared cells are becoming the default. In April 2025 two out of three people in Irish prisons were sharing a cell, with nearly one in five people sharing a cell with two or more others – often in cells designed to accommodate one person. Overcrowding not only strips people of their dignity and privacy, it also heightens tensions and results in more violence. IPRT maintains that capital investment in Irish prison infrastructure must go towards modernising the estate and replacing these squalid, cramped, and overcrowded cells with modern, single occupancy cells, rather than expanding the prison estate or creating further shared cells. We also consider that the Thornton Hall site, which is specifically mentioned, is a white elephant, as it is a number of years away will not effectively address overcrowding in the here and now. We contend that if more prison spaces must be created then we should look to increase the number of open prison spaces rather than continue to pour money into a system that cannot achieve its rehabilitative aims”. 

Saoirse Brady went on to say: 

We note the specific reference in Budget 2026 to funding for an electronic monitoring pilot, and reiterate our view that any such proposal must be carefully considered and subject to a human rights and proportionality assessment. We know in other jurisdictions it has resulted in net-widening and had a particularly detrimental impact on the rights of marginalised communities. We must take care that if electronic monitoring is introduced, that appropriate safeguards are built in from the outset to ensure it does not unduly or disproportionately impact the rights of individuals”. 

Speaking on other key areas of Budget 2026, Saoirse Brady said: 

“We welcome the €8 million increase on expenditure associated with prisoner care and rehabilitation in the Budget although it is unclear what additional services this will provide. In our Pre-Budget submission, IPRT highlighted the need for an appropriate allocation of resources for a Mental Health Needs Analysis for the prison population and welcome that €3 million has been made available for mental health interventions but a significant portion of this will have to be allocated to complete the assessment. This type of analysis is crucial to obtain accurate baseline data on the number of people in prison experiencing mental health concerns and how best their needs can be supported while in prison. 

We also are pleased to see additional funding towards IPS staffing costs to recruit additional staff which will hopefully alleviate the immense pressure on Prison Officers and encourage ongoing investment in staff training and upskilling opportunities, particularly in supporting the mental health needs of people in custody.  

An additional eight per cent for the Parole Board is positive but IPRT is concerned that it will not be enough to expand the remit of the Board which currently only makes decisions related to people serving life sentences. Commitments have been made for several years to pass regulations for long-sentenced prisoners to be able to apply for parole but these have not yet materialised and if they are over the course of the year ahead, the Parole Board will not be in a position to implement them. 

IPRT also welcomes the increase of funding into youth justice interventions, including early interventions and youth diversion programmes. These are essential to support young people to change behaviour but must go hand-in-hand with increases in youth and community work if we truly want to take a prevention and early intervention approach”. 

 

ENDS  

For all media enquiries, or to arrange an interview with Saoirse Brady, IPRT Executive Director, please contact Siobhán Tracey, IPRT Communications and Campaigns Lead on:    

E: communications@iprt.ie      W:  www.iprt.ie  

NOTES FOR EDITORS: 

1. Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) | www.iprt.ie  IPRT is Ireland's leading non-governmental organisation campaigning for the rights of everyone in prison and the progressive reform of Irish penal policy, with prison as a last resort. 

2. The Departmental Press Conference for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration took place at 2pm today – watch back here (opens in new window).  

3. The Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration press release is here (opens in new window).  

4. IPRT pre-Budget submission for Budget 2026  

5. Increased cost of imprisonment: The average annual cost of an available, staffed prison space during the calendar year 2024 was €99,072, an 11.9 per cent increase on the 2023 cost of €88,523. 

Budget 2026 provides: 

• Additional funding of €39 million to the Irish Prison Service (IPS), bringing the total budget for the IPS to almost €579 million. 

• Investment of €67.9 million in capital funding to deliver 1,595 additional prison spaces by 2031, with a masterplan for the Thornton campus to be developed in 2026 to plan for the construction of a new prison, as well as International Protection Accommodation Service accommodation and additional Garda facilities. 

• An additional €15.7 million for the recruitment of up to 100 additional Prison Officers and up to 50 additional staff on a phased basis, along with a 19 per cent increase in funding to allow for 210,000 additional hours in Irish Prisons. 

• An increase of 11.2 per cent (€6.7 million) in funding to the Probation Service, allowing for the recruitment of 100 additional staff. Funding will be used to increase use of supervised community sanctions in the criminal courts, expand restorative justice services, expand national supervised Temporary Release scheme, and provide initial staffing for a Bail Supervision Scheme. 

• €2.1 million to allow for the introduction of electronic tagging. 

• €7.3 million additional funding for Youth Diversion Projects, which now provide opportunities to prevent young people from getting involved in anti-social or criminal behaviour in every part of the State.