Gardai are continuing their search for a convicted rapist who escaped last Sunday while on compassionate release from prison to visit his ill mother.
Martin Farrell (32), who gardai say is from the Skerries area, absconded while serving a nine-year sentence for the double rape of a woman in August 1994, an offence committed while he was on temporary release from a prison sentence.
Gardai have described him as dangerous and say he should not be approached; people should call 999 if they have any information.
At his trial for the double rape in 1995, the court heard that Farrell, then of Kelly Park, Lusk, Co Dublin, drank 16 pints to celebrate his birthday and his temporary release from prison.
Later, he raped the woman in a car after he offered her a lift home.
He then dragged her across fields and forced her up a ladder into a hay barn where he raped her a second time.
She knew at this time he had a prison record and when he began to make a hole in some hay she feared he was going to kill her and hide her body, the court heard.
Farrell held her captive in the hay barn overnight and released her at noon.
He had 18 months of his sentence left to serve in Arbour Hill prison when he was taken to a parochial house in the north of the city last Sunday to visit his sick mother.
On Sunday, the man was accompanied by three prison staff. He asked to go to the toilet, where he escaped through a window.
Speaking on RTE radio, Mr Sean Aylward, Director General of the Prisons Service, said the "escape is a considerable embarrassment for us" and he apologised to the victim's family for any upset it had caused.
Mr Aylward told The Irish Times this type of concession was not frequently shown to prisoners.
It was given when the end of the prisoner's sentence was near and the prisoner has been on good behaviour.
In this case, the compassion showed to the prisoner "clearly turned out to be a misjudgment, as the prisoner breached the trust placed in him".
He said under prison disciplinary rules, officers involved in an investigation had seven days to produce a full account. This period had not yet elapsed, said Mr Aylward. The report will be given to the Governor.