THE governor of Mountjoy Prison, Mr John Lonergan, has said he would like to be able to refuse to take new prisoners into the jail, but cannot legally do so.
Acknowledging the serious overcrowding problem in the prison, Mr Lonergan said the ideal solution would be to tear it down and build a new one, but that could not be done.
He was responding to the 1995 report of the Mountjoy Prison Visiting Committee, which has been submitted to the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, but has yet to be published.
The report highlighted the overcrowding and drugs problem in the prison and was severely critical of the medical services provided for prisoners.
Mr Lonergan said he had seen its suggestion that the governor should be able to refuse to take more prisoners when the prison is full.
I wouldn't disagree with that," he said. "That's fine. But the law doesn't give me authority to do it and I could be held in contempt of court. There's no legal basis for it."
Asked whether Mountjoy was so unsuitable as a prison that it would be preferable to replace it with a new building, he replied "Of course."
"I think anyone associated with Mountjoy wouldn't disagree that the ideal would be to replace Mountjoy with a new building," he said. "That's an ideal solution, but very far from reality."
He said the problem would be finding accommodation for the approximately 600 prisoners while the new prison was being built.
Mountjoy, built in 1850, was not made for the 630 prisoners it often houses. No proper recreation areas or workshops were included in its design, and the external recreation area was concrete except for a yard wide strip of grass beside a wall.
Mr Lonergan said that in some respects the visiting committee report was accurate.
"The visiting committee is right. The prison is grossly overcrowded," he said. "And it's not just the number of people in it, it's the volume that goes through the system.
"Five and a half thousand men go through in a year. The inflow and outflow some days is up to 100 people, being transferred to courts and other prisons or wherever. And every prisoner has to be searched, washed and clothed and given a cell, documents recorded and then they go through again so the process has to be repeated, time and again."
However, Mr Lonergan disagreed with the committee's assessment of the medical services provided in the prison.
"They said there were major difficulties with the medical services," he said. "I said we could do with expansion of all services right across the board."
He pointed out that, apart from seeing prison doctors, prisoners had "access to the best medical services in the country the hospitals."
Mr Lonergan said that while he did not want to have a public argument with the committee, its members did not appear to have understood that prisoners often use visits to doctors in prison for "diversion" from their normal prison routine, and also to complain about non medical matters.
In its report, the committee said it had conducted a "time and motion" study of prison visits by doctors, examining prison records to determine the length of time a doctor was in the prison, and the number of prisoners seen during the period.
The report said that the records showed that one doctor saw 42 patients in 42 minutes during one visit, and 31 patients in 35 minutes on another occasion. Another doctor saw 40 patients during a 50 minute visit, the report said.
"Doctors in prison are used and called upon by prisoners at a different level than in the community."
There were all sorts of other reasons, Mr Lonergan said, why prisoners would go to see a doctor as well as medical reasons, "although they go for real medical reasons, too.
"If a doctor saw 50 or 60 prisoners in a day out of 500, there no was 50 or 60 could all feel ill unless there's an epidemic of flu or something."
Mr Lonergan also took issue with the committee's assertion that 65 per cent of prisoners in the main prison were using illegal drugs.
"The visiting committee doesn't have the research and backup resources to carry out studies, like on the drug thing," he said. "That wasn't scientifically measured. Any such research would take a lot of resources.
"I disagree with the claim that 65 per cent are active drug abusers in the prison. I don't know that." Most drug abuse was an underground activity, some prisoners taking drugs in their cells late at night. "How do you measure that?" he asked.
The prison was planning to carry out its own research shortly, he added.
Mr Lonergan said he was not sure that introducing suffer dogs into the prison would help reduce the level of drug abuse, as had been suggested by the committee and the Minister.
"Most prisoners conceal drugs in their bodies, so it wouldn't be very easy to operate," he said.
"There may be a limit to what dogs can find if they are concealed in that way.
The Department of Justice said it had not yet been decided when the visiting committee's report would be published. The Attorney General had advised the Minister to get more information from the committee and the report would not be available until that process was complete, a spokesman said.