THE Department of Justice has accepted responsibility for the error which led to newspapers (including The Irish Times) and other media wrongly reporting the death of a man in custody on Friday.
An article in Saturday's editions inaccurately stated that a man whose case was the subject of a Supreme Court judgment on Wednesday had died at Arbour Hill prison in Dublin. In fact, it was another man who had died at the jail. The article resulted from inaccurate information passed to the media by normally authoritative senior sources at the Department of Justice.
The Department issued the following statement at the weekend: "The Department of Justice has confirmed that the prisoner who died at Arbour Hill Prison in the early hours of Friday morning was in the same age group and facing very similar charges to the person who was the subject of the Supreme Court case earlier in the week. The death occurred at 4.20 a.m. when prison records were not easily accessible and this led to a misunderstanding in prison circles where a link was regrettably made with the Supreme Court case."