An escaped prisoner is still on the loose today after he absconded from a prison work scheme programme.
Juan Carlos Melgar Alba (42), a Bolivian national and convicted drug dealer, was on release with two other Mountjoy Prison inmates, under the watch of two prison officers, when he escaped late yesterday morning.
The inmates were helping restore an old house into an art studio in Ballymun, Dublin, as part of the prison's programme to "give something back to the community," a spokeswoman for the Irish Prison Service said.
She said officers first noticed that the inmate was missing at 12.15pm yesterday and immediately notified the Prison Service. She said the man was not considered a security risk and had been placed on the programme because of good behaviour and was considered drug free. "He was behaving very, very well in prison," she said.
Gardaí would not comment today on where their search was focussed or how many officers were involved, but all stations had been alerted to his disappearance, a spokesman said.
Melgar Alba was arrested in 2003 and sentanced to eight years for his role in an international cocaine gang in July 2004.
The prison spokeswoman said they were awaiting a report from the Mountjoy governor John Lonergan into the disappearance, which would examine how the man managed to flee.
Politicians have today expressed dismay at the escape, with Fine Gael Justice Spokesman Jim O'Keeffe calling it a "total farce. "I find it hard to believe that a convicted cocaine dealer was made a prison 'Trustee' and allowed to leave the prison," Mr O'Keeffe said.
He said with no ties to Ireland, including a fixed address, the inmate could easily slip over the border into Northern Ireland.
Labour's Brendan Howlin said it was clear that "all rules and regulations in the country's prison system have broken down.
"First we had prisoners using mobile phones from their cells to call in to national radio programmes then we had the searches at Portlaoise prison that uncovered an immense and bizarre haul of contraband including drugs and alcohol."
He said a complete reassessment of the security and supervising of prisoners, both inside and out, was needed.
Melgar Alba was a member of a gang using a flat in Kilkenny city as a cocaine-processing laboratory until they were detected by gardaí in the city in July 2003.
He was not due for release until July 2009. The sentence was backdated to July 2003, when he was first arrested and jailed.