The Bar Council has added its voice to that of the Mountjoy prison visiting committee in criticising governments' records on prisons.
In an editorial on the Crime Forum in the current issue of the Bar Review, the council states: "There is little doubt that social historians of the 21st century will view the inaction of successive governments on prisons as one of the inequities of our century.
"All of our prisons, Mountjoy in particular, are monuments of inhumanity and lack of thought compounded by lack of resources.
"Perhaps more profoundly still the forum raises the issue as to whether prison actually works either as retribution, rehabilitation or as a place of isolation for convicted criminals."
The editorial also states it is logically inconsistent to "lecture criminals on their inhumanity to others while at the same time treating prisoners and suspects in a fundamentally inhuman fashion."
Meanwhile, the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, has said the prison-building programme, which includes the opening of a new prison in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, today, and the building of a 400-place remand prison at Clover Hill, west Dublin, will open the way for an examination of Mountjoy with a view to refurbishing it.
Speaking on RTE news he acknowledged there were problems in Mountjoy and said when remand prisoners had been moved out he would look at the prison "floor by floor, landing by landing", with a view to refurbishment.
Asked if he would consider closing the prison, he said: "Well, I don't think that it's a viable option to close Mountjoy in the short term. I will look at Mountjoy prison to see if refurbishments can be carried out to enable it to be more efficient and more acceptable to prisoners."
He also acknowledged there had been difficulties with the psychiatric service in the prison, but said discussions were now going on with the Eastern Health Board to buy-in psychiatric services, and he hoped this problem would soon be resolved.
He said that the Government was "putting its money where its mouth is" in reinstating the prison-building programme cancelled by the last government, and this would produce over 1,000 new prison places.
Senator Mary Henry, a patron of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, rejected this statement. "This is not so," she said in a statement. "The Government is putting our, the taxpayers' money, where the Government's mouth is, and wasting millions on a policy of increased incarceration of offenders for which there is no social or scientific justification."
Asked on RTE about alternatives to prison, Mr O'Donoghue said he had set up a review group to examine the probation and welfare service, and he expected it to report in the near future. Alternatives might well be proposed, he said. However, he rejected any suggestion that there were numbers of people in prison who should not be.