Irish Prison Service said cost of sick leave hit €11.15m

Prison officers had to take more than 52,000 sick days last year with staff at one jail taking an average of 24 days illness leave each.

The Irish Prison Service said the cost of sick leave in 2023 had been €11.15m and that staff worked in "an extremely challenging environment".

Figures show the average number of sick days taken across the country's prison estate was 15.82 days per person.

However, rates were much higher in certain institutions, the data released under Freedom of Information laws showed.

At Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon, staff took an average of 24.38 days off sick per person at an estimated cost of around €1.1m.

The only other jail where sick leave was above 20 days per staff member was at Portlaoise Prison.

At the high-security jail, staff took an average of 20.45 days off ill last year, or 5,521 days in total and at a cost of just over €1.2m.

The largest illness bills were at Mountjoy Prison and the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise where the cost of sick leave was more than €1.4m per prison.

However, that bill was primarily down to scale with workers at both prisons taking just over 14 days off for illness in 2023, well below the national average.

Levels of sick leave were also high at Cork Prison where employees took around 19 days each at a cost of over €760,000.

In less stressful working environments, the rate of illness was remarkably lower.

At Shelton Abbey open prison in Wicklow, the average number of days of illness for staff was 6.76 days at a combined cost of just over €80,000.

It was a similar story at low-security Loughan House in Co Cavan where workers took on average less than nine days of sick leave.

The lowest sickness rate of all was in the Irish Prison Service College where the average number of days taken off ill by staff was just 2.79.

A spokesman said Irish Prison Service employees worked in a difficult environment facing challenges that were unlike most others in the public sector.

He said a wide range of supports were in place for staff and prison officers were also provided specialist training to develop "the competencies and personal resilience" needed in their role.

"Costings are based on the average pay scale of each grade, on an eight-hour day and the total working hours per year based on a thirty-nine-hour week," he said.

"It should be borne in mind that sick leave is not an extra cost to the taxpayer. The impact is on the ability of the Irish Prison Service to operate as safe a prison system as possible and to provide services to prisoners at the optimum level," he added.

Reporting by Ken Foxe