The final decision on where the new central prison will be built will be made after the completion of a master plan, Justice Minister Costas Fitiris said on Thursday, with the abandoned Nicosia district village of Ayios Sozomenos appearing the most likely site at present.

He explained that the Nicosia district village of Mathiatis had initially appeared to be the most likely location for the new prison, but that “due to the very high financial cost, because it has no infrastructure at all, we put Mathiatis aside and are considering Ayios Sozomenos”.

“Studies carried out with the assistance of the European Development Bank will show whether this is the final decision. I made a commitment to the municipalities which are affected that as soon as we have the master plan, I will present it to them. They will then tell us their opinions and what they would like to see changed,” he said.

Asked whether there is an alternative plan other than Ayios Sozomenos, he said that “for now, we are focused on looking at the pros and cons and making the final decision after the master plan and the studies which will be carried out”.

Should all things go to plan, he said, “the goal is to have bulldozers on the ground before the end of 2027”.

Ayios Sozomenos was a predominantly Turkish Cypriot village, known to its Turkish Cypriot inhabitants as Arpalik, prior to the outbreak of intercommunal violence in Cyprus in the 1960s.

The village’s Turkish Cypriot population – which accounted for 87 per cent of the total number of inhabitants – fled to nearby Louroujina, while its Greek Cypriot population fled in the opposite direction, to Potamia.

At present, the new prison is expected to cost €300 million and have a maximum capacity of 1,500 inmates, but the plans have already faced pushback from the local authorities in the area.

Local authorities give pushback, Cyprus’ prisons most crowded in EU

Both the South Nicosia and Idalion and the Latsia and Yeri municipalities have argued that the area already plays host to “extensive agricultural activity”, and that the specific location was earlier designated for livestock farming.

Plans for a new prison in Mathiatis suffered from similar problems, with village mukhtar Theodoros Tsatsos saying earlier this year that he had not agreed to the construction of any prison within his village, and that construction could only begin with his village’s consent.

He argued that there is no space left in the village, which already hosts two army camps, archaeological sites, churches, and farms.

The European Union had in May declared that prison cells in Cyprus are on average the most crowded in the entire bloc.

Cyprus’ prison has an occupancy rate of 227.6 per cent – a figure which dwarfs the second-highest rate of 134.2 per cent, recorded in Slovenia, and France’s rate of 129.3, which sees it rank third.

A rate of over 100 per cent means that a prison is holding more inmates than it was designed to hold. Cyprus’ rate – more than 200 per cent – means that it is holding more than twice the number of inmates than it has capacity for.