The State’s prison watchdog has expressed concern about “degrading conditions” in cells in one of the country’s largest prisons and their effect on prisoners.
The most senior official in the Office of Inspector of Prisons, Mark Kelly, has strongly criticised conditions at Cloverhill Prison in west Dublin, particularly in relation to overcrowding, following an unannounced inspection of the jail last week.
The visit over three-days by OIP staff led by the chief inspector, Mr Kelly, concluded on December 11th, after which their preliminary findings were shared with Cloverhill’s governor, senior staff and representatives of the Irish Prison Service.
The inspection was a follow-up to an unannounced general inspection that had been carried out by the OIP over 11 days in May 2023 as well as an on-site visit by the chief inspector on October 5th, 2024 in the immediate aftermath of the violent death of a prisoner, Martin Salinger, in his cell in Cloverhill earlier that day.
The chief inspector said he had raised serious concerns about the degrading conditions that he had found in the cells in Cloverhill on that occasion with the Minister for Justice and the director general of the IPS.
Commenting on the latest inspection, Mr Kelly remarked: “The degrading conditions seen in cells at Cloverhill Prison continue to have a critical adverse effect on the people living there.”
The OIP chief inspector said 38 inmates had been sleeping on mattresses on the floor in “overcrowded stuffy and malodorous cells” at the time of the inspection in May 2023.
Mr Kelly recounted how out-of-cell time from many prisoners at the time was considered “very limited.”
“The in-cell lavatories at Cloverhill were not partitioned and prisoners ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in these highly restricted spaces,” he added.
Mr Kelly said the OIP had concluded from that visit that violence between prisoners was “the inevitable result of confining four adult men per cell in these degrading conditions.”
He claimed last week’s inspection showed the problem had worsened as the number of people sleeping on mattresses in Cloverhill had risen to 68, with the prison accommodating 17 per cent more prisoners than its official capacity.
On December 9th, the first day of the recent inspection, a total of 507 individuals were recorded in custody in Cloverhill, according to figures published by the IPS.
The official bed capacity of the prison is 433 which makes Cloverhill the fourth largest of the country’s prisons after the Midlands, Mountjoy and Wheatfield.
In its annual report for 2023 published last week, the IPS acknowledged it was facing “significant challenges” due to a rising prison population.
The daily average number of prisoners in Irish jails last year had risen by 11.1 per cent on 2022 levels from a daily population of 4,122 to 4,582.
The IPS said the increase in the prison population “coupled with a growing number of prisoners serving longer sentences, continues to place pressure on the prison system.”
It claimed the situation highlighted “the need for continued investment in infrastructure and resources to maintain safe and effective prison conditions.”
The latest IPS figures show 5,052 prisoners were recorded in custody at the IPS’s 14 detention centres on Tuesday – 12 % over the combined official bed capacity of 4,534.
The IPS had stated there are plans to create over 1,100 new prison spaces by 2030.
The Irish Penal Reform Trust has claimed the incoming government “faces an immense task to tackle both chronic and acute problems in prisons and in the criminal justice system more widely to stem the flow of people on short sentences into our prison system.”
