Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell has said he has serious concerns with how the Irish Prison Service is being run. He made his comments after armed robber John Daly rang a radio chat show with a smuggled in mobile phone from the maximum security Portlaoise Prison.
Daly (27) from Finglas, Dublin, is nearing the end of a nine-year sentence for armed robbery. On RTÉ Radio One's Liveline yesterday he took issue with a journalist over a story alleging he had fallen out with another man Alan Bradley (32). Bradley, who lost a libel action alleging that he was involved in criminal behaviour, was also on the programme.
At one stage Daly, who swore several times on air, said: "I can't stay long, I can't stay long, I'm ringing from my cell." Daly has now been transferred to Cork Prison and the forfeiture of his remission is under consideration. The mobile phone and SIM cards have also been taken away.
The incident was seized upon by the Fine Gael Justice spokesman Jim O'Keeffe who said it was a "fitting epitaph" for Mr McDowell's tenure as Minister for Justice and he accused the Government of turning prison into a "soft option" for criminals.
Mr McDowell last night said Daly's actions had been "brazen and deliberate" and somebody in the prison service must take personal responsibility for that and other security lapses. He has ordered an investigation into the incident. "I regard this with the utmost seriousness," he said at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association in Westport, Co Mayo.
"This is not the first phone call to be made from Portlaoise Prison . . . This, combined with a number of other things which are the subject now of the Gary Douch [ murdered in Mountjoy last year] inquiry leaves me with very serious questions to be answered about the way in which the prison service is being run."
Mr McDowell also said there may be a "question of complicity" involving prison service staff in a second incident yesterday when a Limerick gangland figure was found with smuggled phones, pornographic DVDs and a DVD player.
