MOUNTJOY prison in Dublin is facing "certain disaster". Overcrowding is at "crisis" levels, the drugs problem has reached "epidemic proportions" and an "ad hoc, uncoordinated" medical (service" is denying prisoners their medical rights, the Mountjoy Prison Visiting Committee has said.
The committee's 1995 report, presented to the Minister for Justice two weeks ago, has not been published. A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said yesterday that the Minister, Mrs Owen, was seeking the advice of the Attorney General on whether its contents should be made public.
The report is severely critical of the management of the drugs problem in the prison. "Prison officers, for obvious reasons, do not approach prisoners when they are shooting up," it says.
The lack of treatment facilities for prisoners with mental problems is "a disgrace", while the unhygienic and "grim" conditions in the prison generally increase the stress of potentially suicidal prisoners, the report says.
As in previous years, the committee, a statutory body made up of ministerial appointees not directly connected to the prison service, has stressed the overcrowding problem in the prison, which accommodates an average of 628 prisoners daily in a building which can reasonably. cater for only 450. But most of the 56 page report is devoted to the medical services at the prison.
The committee reports that in early 1995 it decided to do a "time and motion study on the medical services in the main prison". It examined the prison records of visits by doctors to the prison during 1994, noting the times at which the doctors entered and left the prison. The report "highlights the most relevant information from that time and motion study in order to draw the Minister's attention to the seriousness of the situation."
According to the study, the prison records show that one doctor saw 42 patients in 42 minutes during one visit, and 31 patients in 35 minutes on another occasion. Another doctor saw 40 patients during a 50 minute visit, the report says. "The consistency of these doctors seeing so many patients in such a short time is of considerable concern to this vi siting committee," it says.
The report says doctors at the prison "decline to take blood. samples or do suturing". Hospital visits for these and other procedures are "wasting" taxpayers money, it adds.
The visiting committee reports that a fire which caused extensive damage to the prison last December was caused by a prisoner who had been placed in a padded cell.
A week before the fire the committee had recognised the prisoner's stress and anxiety. Prison records show that the man had attempted to escape, had been banging his cell door, had over dosed on drugs and been "crying and distressed".
"We recommended that he receive appropriate medical treatment, and if possible a transfer out of the main prison. Locking him in a padded cell can hardly have met our suggestion for help," the report says.
There were three suicides and 13 suicide attempts in the male. prison in 1995, the report says. There were 15 suicide attempts by women prisoners.
The growth in the drug problem is illustrated by the number of prisoners found in possession of drugs, up from 46 in 1991 to 124 last year. The number caught with syringes rose from three in 1991 to 71 last year. The report says up to 65 per cent of male prisoners are using illegal drugs, and that this represents a risk to the safety of prison officers.
The committee says the prison governor, Mr John Lonergan, and his staff are doing "tremendous work" which is "beyond the call of duty" in an effort to control the drug problem. It acknowledges new security measures in the visiting area designed to reduce the flow of drugs into the prison, but recommends sniffer dogs be brought into the prison.
It says the medical treatment problems at the prison have been "consistently ignored by Ministers for Justice throughout the years", and that the Department of Justice's own five year plan, published two years ago, has disappeared into "virtual oblivion".