PRISON OFFICERS at Mountjoy jail are to ballot for strike action as part of a worsening row with prison management that has already resulted in a four-hour walk out by the officers.
The dispute erupted last week after the transfer of a violent prisoner into a wing in Mountjoy intended for weaker inmates who need protection from more hardened criminals.
Following the staff walk out, which left a skeletal staff to guard almost 700 inmates, talks between the Prison Officers’ Association (POA)and prison service aimed at settling the dispute were called off last Friday and again on Monday.
The prison service said the talks had been postponed because the officers’ association had last week threatened to strike.
The POA has now responded by effectively formalising its strike threat of last week.
Members of the union met at Mountjoy, north Dublin, yesterday. They unanimously agreed to ballot for industrial action, up to and including striking, unless their concerns relating to the separation unit are addressed.
POA assistant general secretary Gabriel Keaveny said terms agreed between the officers and prison management in March around the running of the unit had been deviated from.
The agreement clearly stated the regime and staffing levels in the separation unit would be revised if there was any change to the profile of the inmates being held in the unit.
He added those revised regime and staffing changes were to be agreed in consultation with his association.
“But now we’ve been told by the management they can put anybody they want in there,” he said.
The POA believes the transfer into the unit last Tuesday of violent criminal Leroy Dumbrell represents a change to the prisoner composition in the unit.
The prison service declined to comment on the POA’s decision to hold a ballot for strike action. A spokesman said the service would await the outcome of the ballot.
The separation unit at the jail is effectively a wing segregated from the rest of the prison where inmates are held if they are deemed to be in need of protection from other prisoners.
It can hold between 50 and 60 inmates and was opened in March. It had been closed since 1997 when inmates in the unit engaged in Mountjoy’s worst ever riot.
The POA says staffing levels at the unit were agreed on the basis that only inmates in need of protection, who are generally easy to handle, would be kept there.
However, officers had become concerned in recent weeks that this condition was being relaxed. Many officers believed violent inmates were being transferred to the unit because the main prison was so overcrowded.
Those fears were heightened last Friday week when an officer in the unit was slashed across the face by a prisoner who had hidden a razor blade on his person.
Last Tuesday it emerged Leroy Dumbrell was being transferred from Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon to Mountjoy’s separation unit, prompting the staff walk out.
Dumbrell (25), from Inchicore, is in prison for beating an innocent man so badly that the victim lost the sight in his eye.
He is regarded as the leader of a prison gang in Mountjoy and has repeatedly engaged in violence in the jail.