NOTHING more could have been done to help Carol Ann Daly, who was found hanging from the bars of her cell window in Mountjoy prison last month, the House was told.
The Minister of State for Social Welfare, Mr Bernard Durkan, deputising for the Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, said. "The governor has advised that he has examined the circumstances surrounding the death and is satisfied that the staff made every effort they could to help the deceased cope with her first experience of prison."
He said Daly's death would be the subject of a public inquiry in the form of an inquest and would also be examined by the suicide awareness group in Mountjoy. The Minister had also established a national steering group under the chairmanship of a senior prison governor to oversee the local suicide awareness groups in various institutions.
Mr Durkan was replying on the adjournment to Ms Frances Fitzgerald (FG, Dublin South East), who said that her death was a poignant example of the experience of women, most of them disadvantaged, who, on a fairly continual basis, were in and out of the women's prisons.