Two prison officers were under arrest last night after a major Garda search operation during the day at two jails and the homes of five prison officers and four suspected drug dealers. Conor Lally, Crime Correspondent, reports.
The searches were carried out as part of an ongoing Garda inquiry into the alleged involvement of prison officers in the smuggling of contraband, including drugs and mobile phones, to inmates.
The cells of three dissident republican prisoners were also searched at Portlaoise Prison, Co Laois.
Gardaí suspect a number of staff at the jail and the adjacent Midlands Prison have been key members of a crime syndicate which has been smuggling drugs, alcohol and telephones to inmates at the jails.
The two prison officers under arrest were among a group of five officers, two from Portlaoise and three from the Midlands, whose homes were searched in the midlands area in a large co-ordinated operation involving 50 gardaí that began at 6am. The two arrested men, aged 34 and 37, were taken to Newbridge Garda station where they were detained under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act. They can be held for 24 hours without charge.
As the homes of the five staff were being searched, another team of gardaí working on the same operation moved in on the homes of four drug dealers in Portlaoise.
The Garda Dog Unit was deployed during the searches which yielded small amounts of cocaine and cannabis.
A number of prison officers' lockers at Portlaoise and the Midlands were also searched along with the cells of three republican inmates in Portlaoise but nothing was found.
The prisoners whose cells were searched are members of the Continuity IRA. They were being housed on the E1 wing.
The searching of the homes of known drug dealers in Portlaoise yesterday represents the first indication that some of the staff under suspicion may have been working with dealers in maintaining the flow of drugs into the jails. The Prison Officers' Association (POA) last night said it was concerned at the allegations being levelled at some of its members. POA assistant general secretary Stephen Delaney said the association would be doing all it could to assist the Garda investigation.
"These alleged actions by a very small group of staff threaten the roles, the safety and the lives of prison staff and do not offer a true reflection on the character of the workforce," he said.
Yesterday's operation was led by the Organised Crime Unit in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the force's serious crimes squad. Many of the gardaí involved were from the Laois-Offaly Garda division.
The operation was the latest part of a major campaign by the Garda and Irish Prison Service to combat the flow of illicit items into prisons.
The smuggling of items such as mobile phones into jails was brought into focus in June when an armed robber from Dublin rang an RTÉ radio chat show from his cell in Portlaoise on a smuggled mobile phone.
Subsequent Garda searches of the jail yielded plasma TV sets, drugs, alcohol, mobile phones, chargers and two budgies.
In March three prison officers, from Dublin's Mountjoy and Wheatfield prisons, were arrested as part of a Garda inquiry into the smuggling of contraband into those facilities.
Two of the three are suspended from work while the third officer has left the Prison Service.
Files on the cases are almost complete and will be sent to the DPP in coming weeks. Prosecutions are expected.