Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern was today accused of overlooking a Government-appointed watchdog tasked with inspecting Mountjoy Prison.
The Joint Oireachtas Justice Committee was told inmates at the Dublin jail suffer overcrowding and inhumane and barbaric conditions, with up to 17 criminal gangs operating within its walls.
Paul MacKay, a former member of the prison’s visiting committee, told the committee Mr Ahern has not visited the jail since taking office two years ago. He also accused the Minister of never giving any response to the committee’s annual report, which is sent directly to him.
Despite the Minister appointing the committee, Mr MacKay, whose term in office expired last month, said relations had become fractured. “We do submit a report once a year. And there is little or no feedback on that report back to the committee,” he told the. “It’s produced some time round-about January in respect of the 12 months previous. This year’s went in in February, I believe, and we never get any feedback at all.”
Asked if relations had become fractured, Mr MacKay replied: “Yes, in my view it has.”
Mr MacKay said he had served on the committee for the last three years, until April 30th, and that he did not expect to be reappointed because he had “stepped on too many toes”.
A spokesman for Mr Ahern confirmed the minister will visit Mountjoy for the first time on June 14th, and said pressures on time and Dail business were to blame for not doing so before.
“The point is he would have met the governors and he would have been in constant contact with the director general and senior staff of the prison service,” the Minister’s spokesman said.
He pointed out that Mr Ahern has visited a range of jails including Arbour Hill, Loughlin House, Portlaoise, Wheatfield, Cloverhill and Midland Prison.
The spokesman said Mr MacKay was not reappointed because the Minister did not want committee members to become stale. “There is a need to refresh people on visiting committees on an ongoing basis because you don’t want to end up with an institutionalised mindset,” the spokesman said.
Mr MacKay said he was horrified by the conditions experienced by inmates.
“Where I’ve tried to raise my concerns about what I have been witness to, with representatives of the Irish Prison Service, the Department of Justice, certain politicians and others, I’ve been met with denial, indifference, obfuscation and obstruction,” the inspector claimed.
Mountjoy Visiting Committee chairman Stephen Langton played down Mr MacKay’s criticism’s of the Minister, saying officials do not expect to have constant meetings.
He said they meet Mr Ahern’s senior officials to discuss the annual report and that he did not want to give the impression that the committee was not being listened to. But he added not all of the issues are dealt with as speedily as they would like.
Mr Langton told TDs and Senators that the population of Mountjoy was about 700 a decade ago but that has been reducing.
“It’s reduced now, not because of a lack of space,” he said. “It’s to do with gang cultures. The amount of gangs housed within Mountjoy Prison, somewhere in the order of 14 or 17 different type gangs.”
The Irish Prison Service director general Brian Purcell said drugs and gangs will continue to plague prisons as long as they remain a problem in society.
“The target has to be to have prisons drug free,” Mr Purcell said. “But really, I’ve got to be realistic in the sense that the day I will see a drug free prison is the day that there is no drugs in use in the community in the outside.”
Mr Purcell said prisoners with substance abuse problems will be placed in units
to help them deal with their addictions, but the problem can persist. “But that’s not to say that some of the prisoners in the drug free units don’t get drugs in.”