IN JUNE 1946, the Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, allowed three Labour Party TDs, James Larkin Junior, William Davin, and Martin O'Sullivan, and Labour Senator Luke Duffy to inspect Portlaoighise Convict Prison (sic) and instructed the governor to give them the fullest opportunity to meet the prisoners and carry out any investigation they considered necessary.
Afterwards they prepared a 6,500-word report for the Minister and the administrative council of the party.
On the positive side, they noted that the building was comparatively modern, lofty, well-lighted and ventilated. The cells were reasonably large, there was a farm attached, the food was plain but wholesome and the bed clothing was reasonably comfortable. Although the prison had more than 250 cells it contained only 103 inmates and they were supervised by 55 warders.
The report did not give a full breakdown of the prisoners by category but it stated that 30 per cent were homosexuals and that seven were political prisoners. It added that the prison contained short-term as well as long-term convicts and that all first-time offenders were kept in a group, regardless of the gravity of their crimes.
Breakfast was at 8.40 and lunch was at 12.40. The last meal was at 4.30pm and the men were then given an "issue of food" which they could eat later.
There were two sessions of work each weekday, on the farm or in the workshop. The younger men could play in the ball alley but for the older men recreation consisted of walking aimlessly in single file around the building. Prisoners could also play draughts or similar games and listen to music on a radiogram until 7.30 pm.
They were not allowed to smoke, even if they could afford to buy cigarettes or tobacco. Lights were switched off at 8.30pm. All prisoners were obliged to wear garb made from "rough, crude material with a shape, fitting and colour too ludicrous to bear explanation".
The political prisoners who refused to wear this outfit were deprived of privileges such as exercise in the open air, visits from family and letters or newspapers. They clothed themselves in blankets converted to loose-fitting garments resembling a child's smock. As the authorities considered this dress to be immodest - and having regard to presence of "a certain type of prisoner" in the jail - they were prevented from going outdoors. "Politicals" were also not allowed to attend Mass while wearing blankets - although, according to one of them, Tomás Mac Curtain, two priests had said that the dress was not immodest. These prisoners were also searched in the nude at frequent intervals and their cell lights were switched on for one minute each quarter hour at night.
Mac Curtain and the others had been in solitary confinement since June 1943 and the visitors observed that over the Whit weekend of 1946 all seven had been locked in their cells from 10.30am on the Saturday to 10.30am on the following Tuesday, apart from 15 minutes on Whit Monday. The visitors doubted that the health of the men could stand up to the strain and they suggested that they be transferred to military custody in the Curragh or elsewhere.
More generally, they reported bleakly that "nothing is done or can be done under the present system to improve morally or intellectually the person sent to penal servitude; he is withdrawn from society and condemned to a life of uselessness."
For the longer term they proposed that places of detention should correspond to a colony rather than a jail, that there should be effective segregation of prisoners by category, that all inmates should have beneficial work and training and that long-term prisoners should have the care and guidance of a doctor and psychiatrist to equip them for a normal life in society after their release.
More immediately, they recommended that short-term prisoners be transferred to other jails; that solitary confinement and bread-and-water diets should be discontinued as forms of punishment; that each cell should have proper lavatory accommodation; that smoking should be permitted in the cells; that relatives and charitable institutions should be allowed to supply tobacco to men who were too sick to earn money from prison tasks; that a light meal should be served at 7.30pm; that cell lights should be left on until 10pm; and that these lights should not be switched on and off while the prisoners were in bed.
The report was published in August 1946 by the Labour Party as a pamphlet entitled Prisons & Prisoners in Ireland, with a cover featuring a picture painted by Harry Kernoff, RHA for Maud Gonne MacBride. It was priced 3d and to help defray costs it carried advertisements from Four Provinces House ("Dancing for the discerning"), Kilkenny Woollen Mills, Gentex Textiles, Athlone, Irish Worsted Mills, Portlaoighise, Hibernian Insurance Company and Brown's Best Flour. It was never debated in the Oireachtas.