The Irish Prison Service has been ordered by a judge to comply with a decision to accept two prisoners into its jails after it had refused to accept them when one of the prisoners had told arresting gardaí that she was suffering from monkeypox and threatened to infect him and his colleagues.
Judge James McNulty told the governor of Cork Prison, Peter O’Brien, that he appreciated the difficulty that the prison service was facing in relation to the two prisoners, Paula Canty (29) and Jerry Foley (47), but there was an onus on the prison service to comply with his court order.
“Without wishing to sound smart or facetious, this is not Ebola, this is monkeypox,” said Judge McNulty on Friday, pointing out that it is spread by physical contact, unlike Covid-19, which is airborne and with which the prisons had coped admirably in limiting during the recent pandemic.
He said that, in the event of the two accused being found to have had monkeypox upon being tested by prison medical staff, it should be possible to isolate them for the required period of four weeks as recommended by public health advice.
Judge McNulty commended Mr O’Brien for the fine service that his officers and organisation provide for society, but he said the prison service had to work on the same principle that the Courts Service and the Garda operate on a daily basis, which was “always expect the unexpected”.
The background to the case was outlined by Judge McNulty in Bandon District Court on Friday. He heard Cork Prison had refused to accept prisoner Foley on Thursday, after staff consulted with the prison service infection control centre, which advised against accepting the prisoner.
Foley’s co-accused Canty was due to be brought to Limerick Prison, but once gardaí learned that Cork Prison had refused to take Foley because of suspected monkeypox, gardaí did not proceed to Limerick and instead both convicted persons spent the night in Bandon Garda station.
Foley, from Grenville Place in Cork city, had fined been €200 by Judge McNulty for being intoxicated in a public place at Belgooly on 14th September. He was given 90 days in jail for breach of bail after the judge heard that Foley was staggering around drunk on the main Kinsale Road.
Canty, from St Eltin’s Crescent, Kinsale, Co Cork, was given six months for obstructing a garda and resisting arrest when she tried to bite Garda Cormac Dineen at Riverstick on September 14. She was given three months concurrent for engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour on the same occasion.
Judge McNulty had cleared the court on Thursday of everyone except those directly involved in the case, after he was informed Canty had told arresting gardaí in Riverstick that she had monkeypox, and she and Foley had spent three days in the Mercy University Hospital with the illness.
He recalled gardaí said Canty had a tiff with Foley. He got off a bus in Belgooly and she got off at Riverstick, but when gardaí went to arrest her, she became aggressive, tried to bite Garda Dineen and threatened to infect him and his colleagues, and said their families would also get the disease.
Judge McNulty said he had no doubt the infection control unit in Cork Prison was acting in line with the Department of Health guidelines regarding isolation when it refused to accept Foley and Canty, but it should have been possible for the prison authorities to keep both prisoners in isolation in the prison.
The net effect of the prison authorities refusing to accept Foley at Cork Prison, prompting gardaí to not make the journey with Canty to Limerick Prison, was that an order of the court was not being obeyed, and the issue needed to be brought to the attention of prison service executives.
He said that four gardaí had been in contact with Canty, and gardaí in Bandon Garda station, who had a duty of care to her when she spent a night in a cell in the station, had all been exposed to a risk of contracting the disease when the prison service refused to take the two prisoners.
He said that he didn’t want to see the situation escalate into “a squabble between An Garda Síochana and the Prison Service”. While there was a difficulty there, there was no point in allowing a difficulty develop into a crisis and he was directing that his order be complied with.
“It is something that needs to be brought to the attention of the Department of Justice before it becomes a crisis,” he said, noting that both Canty and Foley had been to hospital around September 8th and had been swabbed, and it appeared that both had tested negative for monkeypox.
He said it wasn’t clear whether they may have contracted the illness since then, but if they had and knew it, they had shown gross social irresponsibility by travelling by public transport to Kinsale and back on the day that they were arrested by gardaí for intoxication and public order offences.
He said that it wasn’t clear if Canty believed she had monkeypox when she told arresting gardaí that she had the disease, or whether she was somebody with a history of offending, who was “manipulating the situation” to their advantage.
Mr O’Brien said Cork Prison had contacted Cork University Hospital on Friday morning and they were told Canty and Foley had been swabbed but both had both tested negative for monkeypox.
