Health and justice State agencies have disagreed over who was responsible for a prisoner who escaped custody for almost four hours yesterday.
Larry Duignan (32) is believed to have escaped through a window while in St James's Hospital, Dublin, for a routine check-up. He was due to finish his sentence today.
The gardai and the Irish Prisons Service say the prisoner was a patient of the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Dublin.
The hospital did not comment, referring the matter instead to a spokesman for the East Coast Area Health Board who said the prisoner was not in the hospital's care.
The spokesman said the prisoner had been a patient in the Central Mental Hospital at one stage, but this was no longer the case. Details of the man's medical history were not divulged.
The Garda air support unit, local gardai and mobile patrols were involved in the search yesterday, after Duignan absconded shortly after 10 a.m. He was re-arrested in the Kilmainham area after 2 p.m.
The spokesman for the prisons service said the man was serving an 18-month sentence for larceny, running concurrently with a sentence for possession of drugs. He said prisoners are, in general, restrained with handcuffs and sometimes a chain linking them to prison officers.