In the mid-1990's, the level of crime in Ireland was at an all time high, the prisons were overcrowded, and the safety value of temporary release (TR) was bringing the penal system into disrepute. The solution was seen as expansion. With the overall level of crime beginning to drop, there was a dramatic increase in the scale of the proposed prison building program in a 3-year period. Between 1997 and 2002, the prison building program made substantial progress. Yet, the number of committals to prison under sentence was significantly lower in 2001 than it was in 1994 which continued in 2002. To explain why the average daily population of prisoners was rising while in recent years the number of persons committed under sentence had fallen required several layers of explanations. Explanations included: the increased use of remands in custody, the reduction in temporary release, and the increase in sentence lengths. A partial answer to why the commitment to prison expansion when crime was falling and committals to prison were declining must be that when law and order issues became politicized around the time of the 1997 general election, the finances of the state were sufficiently healthy to accommodate the expectations. Tables, figures and references