I will make arrangements for 27 November and if the Deputy wants to come along that is his business. If he cannot we will try to do something else. It is a question of making staff available and things like that. I would like Members to see all the prisons and not just one or two. I would like them to see some of the old ones, some of which have been refurbished or renewed. I would like them to see some of the new prisons, particularly the new one in Glengarriff Parade. I would like to let them see the open prisons. I would like them to see Portlaoise and the damnably expensive and big effort that is required there. I am sure that Deputy Fitzpatrick (Cavan-Monaghan), having been in Government during an exceptionally difficult period, will appreciate fully what I say in that regard. Also I would want them to see Shelton Abbey which is the open prison, and I would like them to see Shanganagh Castle. A lot would be learned.
It is very easy to decry our prison system — I am not accusing Deputy Keating of this — and we are all mature enough to know that there is a small section in our community who would want to do this successfully. There are people in our society who believe that the Achilles' heel of this democracy is the prison system and that if they can create unrest and disruption there they will bring us to heel, as it were. That is not going to happen. Of course, if the prison system breaks up, the courts do not function, the police cannot function and we are in an extremely difficult and dangerous position.
Our prison system had and has its faults but I assure the Deputy that this Government and the Government of which Deputy Fitzpatrick was a member worked hard, and we are working hard, to improve that prison system. As far as this House is concerned, that is a non-political thing and it should not be a political issue in this House. I give credit where it is due to my predecessor and to his predecessor, Deputy O'Malley. I am open to correction, but it is my belief that it was only from 1970 onwards that we began to realise that our prison system needed the overhaul that it got since then and that up to then Governments, irrespective of what parties were in power, did not do what they should have been doing in seeing to it that the prison service was as well developed as it could or should be. Tremendous progress has been made by my predecessor and his predecessor and I pay tribute publicly to the two of them and to those who supported them within the Governments of which they were members at the time. I have maintained the momentum which they initiated. I want Deputy Keating and others to see what we have done, to appreciate the efforts we have made and to understand how we have been operating.
It is easy to decry a system. It may be the popular thing to do. There are those who want to knock our prison system completely and it is our job to protect the system against that. Only this week we had a visit by a representative of the French Ministry dealing with prisons because they believed they could learn from us. I was talking to the Swedish Minister of the Interior. The Swedes had heard about our system and they had come here to see what they could learn from it, to see if they could adopt some of its features. Recently we had a representative of the Norwegian prisons authority and we also had one from the US.
We have had many handicaps to overcome and our efforts to overcome them have been costly. Deputies should appreciate the sort of difficulties any Minister for Justice must try to overcome, such as resistance to the siting of prisons. People say prisons are not being administered properly. It has been said that there is need for a prisons board. I want to respond by pointing out that the sort of flexibility now present in our prison system is the envy of many prison adminin-strations throughout Europe. The type of board Deputy Keating has been talking about would be inflexible. A Minister for Justice must have goodwill if he is to be successful in his job, no matter to which party he belongs. I have been doing all I can in relation to our prisons. As I have said, others have come here to have a look at our system and of course we can learn from others.