The President spent more than an hour with prisoners and staff in Mountjoy women's prison after attending Mass there yesterday.
Mrs Robinson was greeted by the prison governor, Mr John Lonergan, on her arrival shortly before 10.30 a.m. Mass was celebrated in a corridor area, as there is no chapel in the women's prison.
Between 30 and 40 prisoners attended, most of them very young, according to a spokes woman for the President.
At the end of the Mass, she was presented with an art work by Suzanne Reddin from Limerick, the only "lifer" in the women's prison.