The prisoner who died in a fire in his padded cell at Castlerea Prison, Co Roscommon, used a cigarette lighter to start the blaze while the sprinkler system was not in operation.
Initial indications suggest that Anthony Ward (25), from Greenfort Crescent, Clondalkin, Co Dublin, died of smoke inhalation when he set the bedding and mattress wrapping in his cell alight shortly before midnight on Wednesday.
Ward had been seen earlier that day by the prison doctor who recommended that he be sent to the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Dublin.
The director of the hospital, Dr Charles Smith, said yesterday that they were aware of the patient, but the hospital was full and they did not have any place for him.
"He would have gone on our waiting list and we would have taken him as soon as possible." Dr Smith added that because Ward was in a padded cell it would ordinarily be considered a safe place for a prisoner and it would be "a rare thing to anticipate" that he would have set the cell on fire.
Ward had been placed in the padded cell in the segregation unit of the modern prison because he had attempted to cut himself and his cell was checked every 15 minutes.
A Department spokesman said the Minister for Justice had appointed two senior officials to conduct an inquiry into the death and they visited the prison yesterday as part of that investigation.
A separate Garda inquiry is being conducted by Supt Mick Roche of Castlerea Garda station which has responsibility for the prison. He said last night that the prisoner appeared to have set the cell alight. "He then pressed a button in his cell which activated a control panel and alerted the warden."
Supt Roche said that prison officers arrived very promptly on the scene but because of the smoke build up they had to put on breathing apparatus to get Ward out and by that time he was dead.
Forensic scientists carried out a day-long examination of the scene, while a post-mortem examination by the State pathologist, Dr John Harbison, was continuing last night at Roscommon General Hospital.
The sprinkler system in the £24 million two-year-old Co Roscommon prison was disabled and was being investigated because the authorities were concerned that prisoners could use it to commit suicide.
Mr Dan Scannell, the prison governor, said the system was being replaced with a safer system which would also include a smoke extractor. He said on RTE television that the old system contained a hook which they felt could be used by inmates to hang themselves.
Ward, a father of three, had been sentenced in January 1995 to nine months for burglary, trespass and larceny, according to department sources. He got temporary release in March that year but did not return to prison. He remained "unlawfully at large" until April this year when he was re-arrested and then sentenced again for assault. He was in Wheatfield Prison in Dublin before being transferred to Castlerea.
The prison has been in operation for two years and has a 160prisoner capacity. It takes all categories of convicted and sentenced prisoners, apart from "subversives" and is the remand prison for the north-west region.
A separate 40-bed secure psychiatric unit for risk prisoners is being built at the new Portlaoise prison and is expected to come on stream at the end of 1999, almost 15-years after the Whitaker inquiry into prisons made such a recommendation.