Successive Ministers for Justice have been criticised by the High Court for allowing prison authorities to breach rules relating to the health and welfare of prisoners.
Mr Justice Budd said the present regime of regulations was obsolete and ignored in many vital respects. It was unfair that there should be uncertainty as to which rules the Minister and prison governors felt should be ignored with impunity.
Mr Justice Budd was dealing with an application for release by a prisoner who feared for his life because of enforced confinement with AIDS sufferers and prisoners who were HIV positive.
He said it was ironic that one rule stated the prison governor must comply strictly with the regulations while there had been blatant and systematic breach of another with regard to medical examinations. While medical practice had changed, the rules had never been revised.
Mr Justice Budd said the members of any community were entitled to know under what rules their lives were regulated. There should be a regime which was practical, fair and reasonably certain in order to avoid injustice, whimsy, caprice and autocratic unfairness flourishing.
He said Marcus Brennan, held in Portlaoise Prison, who had served parts of his sentence in Mountjoy, had complained that conditions which he had to endure and the company he was compelled to keep were putting his health and life at risk.
Brennan had been obliged to share a cell in the basement area of Mountjoy with four other prisoners who, in a very confined space, were injecting themselves with drugs. On another occasion in the same prison he had to share a double cell with 12 other prisoners, some suffering from AIDS and hepatitis.
On transfer from Mountjoy no medical examination was carried out contrary to Rule 16 and no medical examination was carried out on his arrival at Portlaoise contrary to Rule 9. In Portlaoise he was placed on a landing with 65 other prisoners sharing four toilets, three showers and five sinks, one of which was used for slopping out.
Mr Justice Budd said Brennan contended the conditions in which he had been incarcerated were inhumane, degrading and dangerous particularly with regard to overcrowding and the risk of infectious disease. He had to prove this and show that the authorities were unwilling or unable to rectify those conditions.
"While I accept there is crowded and shared accommodation in Portlaoise and that there is inadequacy of medical examination on arrival and on transfers from the point of view of compliance with existing rules, nevertheless I do not think he has shown that the departures from the rules have brought about conditions which seriously endanger his life or health or subject him to inhumane or degrading treatment," Mr Justice Budd said.
He adjourned making a final order until he has heard further submissions from counsel in the new law term.