§ MR. MARUMasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been directed to the dissatisfaction existing amongst the magistracy and general public of Kilkenny county and city by reason of the absence of a female prison in Kilkenny, during the last three years, whereby females remanded or committed for perhaps trivial offences or defaults, in the north portion of the county, are sent, under police escort, some sixteen miles by road, possibly in inclement weather, and twenty miles per rail, to the gaol of Tullamore, in King's County, and likewise females in the south, under similar circumstances, are sent to Water-ford Gaol, a distance of some thirty miles; and, whether the Government is prepared to recommend to the prison authorities the advisability of re-establishing a prison for females in the city of Kilkenny?
§ MR. CAMPBELL - BANNERMANThe Government have received no complaints of the abolition of the prison, which followed upon the closing of Spike Island. In view of the strong recommendation of the recent Royal Commission that the prisons in Ireland should be further concentrated, I should say there is little prospect of a female prison being re-established at Kilkenny; but the future status of the prison in that City forms part of the general question which is now under consideration.