Gardaí are continuing to search for two men who escaped from Castlerea Prison in the early hours of yesterday.
The Romanian men, Toader Feier (23) and his brother Vasile (29), were last seen in the prison at about 11.30pm on Sunday. They were each serving sentences of just under two years for the theft of money from parking meters in Galway. They were due for release in April of next year.
The brothers were being detained in the semi-open Grove residential area rather than in cells within the main prison. The Grove is surrounded by a wire fence and that section of the campus is surrounded by the perimeter wall of the prison proper.
Gardaí and the Irish Prison Service are trying to establish if the men had outside assistance in climbing the wall.
“You wouldn’t do it on your own, they must have had somebody who threw something over the wall to them like a rope or something that helped them get out,” said one source.
Immediately after their disappearance was noticed, gardaí established road blocks in the area, although the men could have been driven to any part of the country at that stage.
A prison source said that a note saying “sorry, we had no choice” was found in the room in which one of the men was staying.
A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said an internal investigation into the matter was underway.