§ MR. O'SULLIVANasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, If it is a fact that Thomas Russell, one of the young men sentenced to fine and imprisonment on account of the Kilross riots, was placed a second time on the plank bed in the Kilkenny Prison, notwithstanding the pledge given by Mr. Attorney General, that none of those prisoners would be placed on the plank bed a second time for that offence?
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)Sir, when a person is sentenced for separate offences to separate though consecutive terms of imprisonment, each imprisonment is in law a distinct punishment, and the original Rules for prison discipline are applied to each as a separate punishment. In order to obviate repetition of the plank bed in such cases, the Prisons Board in April framed a new Rule providing in effect that such consecutive sentences should for prison discipline be treated as one term of imprisonment, so that the prisoner should be placed only once on the plank bed, and when my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland, in my absence, answered the hon. Member's Question to which he refers in this Question, it was, of course, assumed that the new Rule would be sanctioned and promulgated immediately. It was 1383 subsequently sanctioned by the Lord Lieutenant in Council, but before it was promulgated by the Governor of Kilkenny Prison, Thomas Russell had been dealt with under the original Rules. Of course, this will not occur again under the new Rule to which I have referred.