The men convicted of killing Detective Garda Jerry McCabe during a bank robbery in 1996 are "lording it" over other prisoners in Castlerea, it has been claimed in the Dáil.
Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr Jim O'Keeffe, made the claim as he put questions to the Minister for Justice in the House today.
He said the prisoners would not allow other prisoners to have any "hand, act or part" in cooking their food and would not allow other prisoners to work in their general vicinity.
Mr O'Keeffe said that until relatively recently, a prison officer had been "sent down to the local shop" every day with orders from the men convicted of killing Det Garda McCabe. Now, their orders were faxed in each day, he said.
Mr O'Keeffe asked Mr McDowell whether this was not bad for the morale of the Garda and for the morale of the prison staff in Castlerea.
Mr McDowell said the situation that exists at the area of Castlerea known as The Grove, where the McCabe killers are held, was one he had inherited.
He then accused TDs who posed for photographs with the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe of "rank hypocrisy" and said the issue is one not just for Garda morale, but for national morale.
The minister said the incident in which a number Sinn Féin TDs had posed for photographs with the killers of Garda McCabe and for those pictures to be circulated in a newspaper was an "abuse" of the rules of the prison. Mr McDowell said he had roundly condemned that incident.
It was "rank hypocrisy" on the part of those TDs and was not simply a matter of Garda morale, but of national morale that they should behave in this way, Mr McDowell said.
Four Sinn Féin TDs - Mr Caoimghín Ó Caoláin, Mr Sean Crowe, Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Mr Martin Ferris - were pictured last year in Castlerea Prison beside Kevin Walsh, who shot dead Det Garda McCabe as he was protecting a cash delivery in Limerick in June 1996.
Also in the picture were fellow IRA men convicted of involvment in the killing - Pearse McAuley, Jeremiah Sheehy and Michael O'Neill.