MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern has insisted overcrowding was not the reason for the disturbance at Mountjoy Prison saying the success of new measures to stop the flow of drugs into the jail had raised tensions among some inmates.
He said the number of inmates, at 677, in Mountjoy on Thursday night, when a group of 75 prisoners had to be brought under control by prison officers in riot gear, was lower than in recent months.
“We have to, as much as we can, stop drugs getting into that prison, mobile phones getting in. New measures have been put in place in recent times which are proving very successful. That leads to tensions.
“Obviously I don’t want large [inmate] numbers leading to over-capacity. But I am not in a position where I can put up a ‘no vacancies’ sign.” Mr Ahern was speaking in Tipperary town where he turned the sod on the site for the new offices of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service.
His comments followed an incident in Mountjoy on Thursday when two prison officers were assaulted by a group of six Limerick inmates, two of whom used pool cues and balls as weapons.
A large group of inmates then armed themselves with iron bars and the legs off tables and chairs and made their way to a nearby outdoor exercise yard.
The incident began at 6.50pm and the 75-strong group refused to move from the yard when they were due to be locked into their cells for the night at 8pm.
Teams of prison officers in riot gear were drafted in from other jails in the city and along with officers from Mountjoy moved into the yard and brought the incident under control by 9.30pm.
A total of three prison officers and one inmate were hospitalised but none was seriously injured.
Hundreds of inmates in two wings of the jail were locked into their cells all day yesterday to calm the prison. The six ringleaders during Thursday’s incident have been transferred to other jails.
Fine Gael said the incident underlined how violent and dysfunctional the prison system had become. The Prison Officers’ Association said Mountjoy was overcrowded, leading to a tense environment where violence and bullying thrived.
Mr Ahern said while he accepted overcrowding was an issue across the prison system, a number of prison expansion programmes that will create an extra 500 prison spaces were either under way or about to start.
On Monday, a new block at Wheatfield Prison, west Dublin, would be opened. He said the Fines Act had been enacted to reduce the numbers being sent to prison for non-payment of fines.
He was also working on new legislation that would require judges to consider community service sanctions as an alternative to imprisonment for minor offences.