The Prisons Service has confirmed that two prisoners escaped from the new £13 million Mountjoy women's prison less than two weeks after it was opened.
The two women, whose names were not released, were part of a group working within the prison when they absconded.
They were on "temporary release" from the old Mountjoy jail for the day but were supposed to confine themselves to a working area within the new prison, said a spokesman for the Prisons Service.
According to sources, they were completing sentences for petty offences and left the prison through a window.
They fled on October 11th, with one returning that night and the other four days later.
The spokesman said the two would not have been subject to tight security and had been working at the prison for several days. "They would have been allowed to move around quite freely within the prison." He pointed out they were not inmates of the new prison at the time.
The prison has a gym and a centre for women's education and work training. The women were last seen near this area.
The prison is capable of holding 80 inmates. It has small self-contained residential houses holding 10 prisoners each. The standard size of the cells is 11.7 square metres.
Meanwhile, the remand prison at Cloverhill in Ballyfermot, Dublin, is expected to accept its first inmates within days.
The main contractor, John Sisk and Sons, has been working with sub-contractors to repair defects over the last week. A small group of remand prisoners from Mountjoy will be moved into the prison first.
It can accommodate 400 prisoners and once it opens, the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, has said, he will refurbish the men's prison at Mountjoy "floor by floor and landing by landing".