FRIENDS of the 21 year old woman who hanged herself in Mountjoy Prison yesterday claimed she made a distraught telephone call from the prison three hours before she died.
Prison sources insist Ms Carol Ann Daly showed no signs of distress when she was checked by a prison officer 30 minutes before she was discovered hanging from the window bars in her cell.
She is the fourth prisoner to die from suicide this year and only the second woman to die this way in prison.
Ms Daly, a heroin addict for a number of years, had been arrested by gardai on Wednesday evening for failing to attend court on a shoplifting charge. She was brought to Mountjoy Prison at 10.30 p.m., her first time in the prison.
A Labour Party TD, Mr Joe Costello, said the women's prison at Mountjoy was a "depressing location and unsuitable for detention of anybody, male or female".
The deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, Mr Tom Hoare called on Mr Costello to use his position as a member of a party in Government to "come up with solutions to the problems in Mountjoy".
Mr Hoare said there have been nine attempted suicides in prison this year. There were 118 incidents where prisoners injured themselves including 22 attempted hangings.
Ms Daly, who comes from a middle class background, had been prone to depression since the death of her new born son two years ago. She had been living in north inner Dublin and, like most heroin addicts in Dublin, had been shoplifting to feed her habit. Her boyfriend is understood to be serving a jail term for robbery in Mountjoy Prison.