Ireland: Irish Prison Service confirms overcrowding issues

As of Friday, 167 prisoners were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, with half of them in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison. One prisoner, who had just been released from Mountjoy last Thursday, said it was overcrowded.“It’s packed in there. It’s all double cells and all that, the place is wrecked …it’s against your hygiene,“ he said. One couple, visiting their grandson, said they were told that in some cases there’s currently three to a cell in Mountjoy. “Most of them are two to a cell, but there’s only supposed to be one prisoner in each cell. Some are three in a cell…that should not happen in this country, not in this day and age,” they said.