Chronic overcrowding in the Republic’s prison system led to more than 600 inmates being obliged to sleep on mattresses earlier this month.
The State has 4,718 prison spaces, but on January 7th, 5,761 people were incarcerated, leaving 613 prisoners without a bed.
In multiple cells, three or four prisoners were crammed into spaces meant for two, while there was also insufficient ventilation and partitioning.
Some prisoners had to urinate or defecate in each other’s presence and, in some cases, were forced to eat their meals next to an open toilet.
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Details of overcrowding are contained in a briefing to be given by the Office of the Inspector of Prisons (OIP) to the Oireachtas committee on justice on Tuesday.
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It follows a scathing annual report by the OIP published in November, which set out such overcrowded conditions.
In his opening remarks to the committee, chief inspector of prisons Mark Kelly will say the situation is “inhuman and degrading, unworthy of Ireland in 2026″.
Last month, conditions in Irish jails prompted a second visit by the Council of Europe’s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture in just 18 months.
It suggested that prisoners would have a good chance of winning a case against the State under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits ill-treatment.
Mr Kelly is expected to say that building more prison spaces is not the answer and “no comparable jurisdiction has ever succeeded in building its way out of overcrowding”.
He will suggest the Government should put an enforceable ceiling on the number of people who can safely be held.
“Reducing the current prison population, not building more prisons, should be the priority,” he will say.
He is likely to express frustration at the slow manner in which the Department of Justice has published his annual reports. The one for 2023 was submitted to the Minister for Justice on March 29th, 2024, but not published for almost a year.
He will also reveal that 20 reports – relating to seven inspections and 13 deaths in custody – have yet to be published.
“The critical situation in Ireland’s prisons is not a matter of future or emerging concern, it is a present and ongoing crisis that engages the State’s most fundamental human rights obligations,” he will tell TDs and Senators.
“The evidence before you from my office and from the lived reality of the thousands of people deprived of their liberty is undisputable.
“Overcrowding on this scale, and the conditions it produces, are an affront to human dignity and wholly incompatible with Ireland’s legal commitments at national, European and international level.”
Mr Kelly will say, however, that Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has sought to advance commitments in the programme for government for alternatives to “custodial sanctions”, including piloting the use of electronic monitoring, or tagging.
