THE DIRECTOR OF the Irish Prison Service has said bringing charges against people throwing drugs into the country’s jails is “very difficult”.
It follows the broadcast of CCTV footage last night, which showed two people throwing packets of drugs over the wall of Dublin’s Mountjoy.
The young man shown in the footage threw 13 packages into the grounds of the prison in under ten minutes, according to last night’s report by RTÉ’s Paul Reynolds.
Speaking on Morning Ireland today, director of prisons Michael Donnellan said the service had stepped up measures to prevent the practice in recent years.
Cameras have been placed along prison walls, amongst other measures — and netting has “helped tremendously,” he said.
Gardaí also carry out regular patrols of areas outside prisons, he said.
However:
As you can see from the footage last night, people just wait for the gardaí to go by and then come back and start throwing them over the wall.
Donnellan also spoke about new measures being introduced to help combat the use of illegal drugs in the prison system.
It follows the deaths of two prisoners — in Dublin’s Wheatfield and in Limerick — from suspected drug overdoses, over the Christmas period.
He said he hoped a new search procedure involving airport-level screening for both visitors and staff would be in place within the next six months.
Patrols by dog units would also be stepped up, he said. A phone-line service is also being brought on-stream, allowing people to report incidents of drug use confidentially.
Highly-regulated ‘zero tolerance’ drug free zones will also be expended, within prisons.
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