Recording of prisoner phone calls occurred ‘inadvertently’, says Irish Prison Service

The Irish Prison Service has insisted the recording of client-solicitor telephone calls between prisoners and their lawyers occurred inadvertently, adding the calls formed no part in investigations carried out by the Garda.

Sources within the prison service said while calls by at least 82 prisoners currently in custody had been recorded, the tapes were not accessed by anybody outside the prison system.

The revelation would appear to allay concerns that the botched recording of the calls may render unsafe convictions that resulted from Garda investigations somehow aided by listening to the recordings.

The prison service sources were reacting yesterday to statements in the Dáil by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who revealed the calls were recorded.

News of the recording of thousands of calls in and out of the Garda stations by the force emerged early last week. However, while it has been confirmed at least 2,693 calls are still on archive, the nature of all of the conversations taped remains unclear.

Other solicitors
The recording of the prisoners' calls to their solicitors appears, in at least some cases, to have come about because some prisoners were speaking to more than one solicitor from prison.

Prisoners are allowed telephone calls from jails to family and friends, all of which are recorded. However, when they are telephoning their solicitors or the Samaritans the calls are private.

The prisoners must designate their solicitor’s name and the conversations with that named solicitor or firm of solicitors are rendered private.

However, some prisoners were seeking advice over the phone from more than one solicitor and it was when they were conversing with those legal representatives that the calls were recorded.

Coalition
The calls were recorded before the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition came into office three years ago. However, the current secretary general of the Department of Justice, Brian Purcell was the director general of the Irish Prison Service.

He moved from the prisons post into his current role when appointed by Mr Shatter in August 2011 to head the department.

Mr Purcell is also at the centre of the controversy around why Mr Shatter was not more promptly informed that the widespread recording by the Garda of phone calls into and out of the Garda stations was about to become public and was giving rise to serious legal concerns.

The former Garda commissioner Martin Callinan wrote to Mr Purcell on March 10th, requesting the issue be brought to the attention of Mr Shatter, with the letter received on the same day.

However, it was not until Tuesday, March 26th, that the minister was furnished with the letter.

Mr Purcell was absent from work from March 15th to March 24th due to a family bereavement, though five days elapsed between receipt of the Callinan letter and that period of leave commencing.