Almost €19 million was paid in allowances to prison staff last year, including extra payments for operating tuck shops, wearing plain clothes, handling dogs, and answering telephones.
Irish Prison Service figures show €64,000 was paid to 23 staff under a “tuck shop” allowance in 2025.
Another €79,000 was provided in plain-clothes allowances to 185 employees, while 78 staff shared just over €12,000 in telephone payments.
Dog-handling allowances worth €27,000 were paid to twenty workers, according to records released under FOI.
The largest individual category was an operational allowance, which cost roughly €15.7 million and was shared among 3,684 staff.
That works out at around €4,250 per employee per year, the data showed.
Environment allowances were the next most expensive at almost €624,000 and were paid to 353 employees.
These include payments for working at high-security Portlaoise Prison, reflecting the historical and additional dangers of dealing with paramilitary and gangland prisoners.
Nurse officers received roughly €496,000 in allowances, with the money divided among 75 employees.
There were also payments of more than €253,500 for court-escort duties and €175,000 in driving allowances.
The driving payments were made to 978 members of staff, while a separate driving and handyman allowance cost almost €10,900.
A total of €67,000 was spent on gate allowances, with another €68,000 paid under a category for reception duties.
Thirteen staff shared more than €92,000 in unspecified miscellaneous allowances, an average of around €7,100 each.
Nine employees received acting allowances totalling €117,000, equivalent to a per-person payment of almost €13,000.
On-call allowances cost €68,000 and were paid to twelve staff, while 75 detail assistants shared payments worth just over €228,000.
The figures also included a series of allowances for governors, assistant governors and chief officers.
Assistant governor duty allowances cost almost €257,000, while a separate payment category for governors came to more than €263,000.
Allowances for chief officer duties added a further €135,000 to the overall bill.
The total cost of the allowance payments listed by the Irish Prison Service was around €18.8 million.