The Minister for Justice has promised better consultation between management and prison officers about health and safety following a meeting with the Prison Officers' Association last night.
The meeting followed unofficial industrial action by officers at Mountjoy prison in Dublin. A union meeting of the Mountjoy POA branch was held at lunchtime and lasted until 3 p.m.
Described by a POA source as a "spontaneous stoppage" the meeting delayed for an hour the normal unlocking of prisoners at 2 p.m.
Prison officers have reacted angrily to sentences handed down to two prisoners involved in the Mountjoy siege in 1997. Eddie Ferncombe and Eamonn Seery were sentenced to three years and two years respectively by Judge Dominic Lynch on Monday.
A source at Mountjoy said there had been a "huge attendance" at the branch meeting and officers were extremely angry. Officers demanded a number of measures to be introduced for health and safety reasons, including training in control and restraint techniques for prison officers.
A POA delegation, led by deputy general secretary Tom Hoare, met Mr O'Donoghue last night at Leinster House. Mr O'Donoghue could not comment on the decision, the Department of Justice said last night in a statement. But "he wished to make it clear that he attached the utmost importance to measures to ensure the safety of prison staff".
At the meeting it was agreed that "further enhanced consultation procedures would be put in place between management and staff in relation to this issue through a high level group".
Mr Hoare said the POA welcomed the statement as "one of the most serious and strongest statements issued by the Minister". The "high level group", whose membership has yet to be decided, will also examine legislation surrounding attacks on prison officers, including the question of sentencing guidelines or mandatory sentencing.
The statement said Mr O'Donoghue "acknowledged that the hostage-taking incident in question had been regarded by those working within the prison system as one of the most serious outbreaks of disorder in Irish prisons since the foundation of the State".
Mr Hoare said a joint delegation of prison officers and management is to visit a special unit for violent prisoners in Britain.
The Department of Justice statement also described claims that the prisoners involved in the siege are locked up for 23 hours a day as "untrue". A security source said under the regime in Portlaoise the six prisoners are unlocked for three hours in the morning and more than four hours in the afternoon, before being locked up at 7.15 p.m. for the night.
"Both the Association and the Minister agreed that it would be entirely irresponsible for people on the basis of misinformation or otherwise to characterise security measures being taken in relation to particular groups of prisoners as arising in any context other than the legitimate need to counteract the serious threat which their previous behaviour indicated they represented," the statement said.
