Overcrowding in Mountjoy prison leads to increased drug-taking, violence, depression and the spread of infectious illness, according to a report from the prison's visiting committee.
The report, which was presented to the Minister for Justice on Friday, is to be released this week. It was seen by RTE's crime correspondent, Paul Reynolds.
Mr Reynolds reported the visiting committee took the unusual step of re-submitting its 1996 report with some additions. The committee said it did this because conditions had not changed.
The report says the population has risen to 760 at times, which, in a prison built for 450, is intolerable. In the women's prison the numbers rise to 70 and all recreational areas are used for accommodation.
It says one of the reasons for the overcrowding is many people in Mountjoy are there for not paying fines; some fines are as small as £5.
Much of the report focuses on the committee's concern over the lack of psychiatric services, and it says that for several weeks last year no psychiatrist visited the prison.
About 100 of the prisoners should be in a psychiatric hospital, the report says. A system operates with the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Dublin, whereby if a prisoner is sent to the hospital, a hospital inmate is sent back to Mountjoy. Padded cells are used far to often, the report says.
It also criticises provisions for treating drug addicts. Only 70 prisoners were able to get treatment, even though more than 3,000 drug-addicted prisoners passed through the jail. On any one day, only nine are on any sort of structured programme.
Two many women prisoners are returning to prison with large supplies of drugs. But many women do not avail of temporary release as prison is preferable to the lives they lead outside.
The report praises the governor and staff and says last year no prisoner committed suicide. It talks of the "near despair of the Governor at the lack of response to these reports by the Department of Justice."
The Fine Gael justice spokesman, Mr Jim Higgins, said the report was yet another "compelling argument for an urgent reappraisal of the current prison-based penal policy which is not working."
The prison system cost the taxpayer £10 million a year, led to a 70 per cent re-offending rate and was failing to either deter or rehabilitate. "The viable alternative to prisons, as published earlier this year by Fine Gael, is a 10-point plan focused primarily on community-based sanctions for perpetrators of non-violent crime."
A Department of Justice spokesman said the Department had never sought to deny there were problems in Mountjoy, which was the reason for the prison-building programme.
A further 160 places would be available from tomorrow when the new prison in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, was opened, he said.
A further 400 places will be available by the years's end when the remand unit at Cloverhill, beside Wheatfield Prison in Dublin, is open. This will immediately take 200 remand prisoners out of Mountjoy and help relieve overcrowding.
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, Dr Valerie Breshnihan, told the trust's annual meeting at the weekend that no one had questioned why more prison space was needed. Crime had decreased, but Ireland still had the highest rate of prisoner through-put in Europe.
She was also critical of the high cost of keeping someone in prison with a poor rehabilitation service, pathetic drug-addiction services and poor medical services.
"Since the spurious acceptability of zero tolerance and its subsequent consequences for greater prison intake, there are those concerned people who work within our prisons today who say that degrading treatment is more and more becoming the norm despite the best efforts of the many dedicated prison staff."