Justice Minister warns bringing Kinahan crime group down leaves scope for other gangs to take its place

Justice Minister Helen McEntee has warned bringing the Kinahan organised crime group down leaves scope for other gangs to move into the space they occupied.

Ms McWntee has vowed to create extra prison spaces and support the prison service in dealing with gang crime.

With 79 members of the Kinahan group behind bars, she said the operations mounted against crime groups has an impact on prisons and prison officers who have to deal with them.

Speaking at the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) annual conference in Sligo yesterday, Ms McEntee said prison officer numbers had not increased in many years and she planned to address this in the upcoming Budget later this year.

“I think there is a concern, obviously, as senior members of the Kinahan organised crime group are brought under the spotlight, and the potential of what that means for them, there is always scope for somebody else to move into that space.

“I think that’s, unfortunately, what happens in these types of circumstances,” she said when asked about the influence the senior Kinahan gang members in jail have.

She said effective prison management and the right “resources and structures” were required to deal with prominent gang members in Irish jails, which was a “significant body of work”.

“There are effective ways of managing prisoners, especially where you have prisoners from two different gangs or organisations, and it’s important the prison service is supported to do that,” she said.

She added that the Kinahan gang brought untold misery to many communities and anyone else thinking of doing that should realise there are repercussions.

Prison overcrowding was brought up at the conference as a growing problem, with Ms McEntee saying it is “not acceptable” for prisoners to be sleeping on floors due to overcrowding in Irish prisons.

Assistant general secretary of the POA, Gabriel Keaveny, said 10pc, or more than 30 inmates, in Cloverhill Prison were now sleeping on mattresses.

“That’s completely unsustainable. The whole training unit remains closed in Mountjoy.

“We’ve other instances in the Dochas centre and Cork prison across the estate where there’s problems with overcrowding.

“It has to be dealt with. We need additional spaces as well as the reopening of the training unit,” he said.

POA president Tony Power said overcrowding leads to increased tension and incidents of violence.

“We need about another 600 spaces in the prisons. We have about 4200, we need about 4800 or 5000. Because the jails are now being unlocked again the levels of violence between prisoner-on-prisoner, and in prisoner-on-staff have increased and we had some incidents last week in Mountjoy where some staff got injured,” he said.

Ms McEntee said in the period before she became minister, in 2019, a review of the capacity of the Irish Prison Service had been carried out and some 140 new spaces were created in the system arising from that.

Looking to later this year, she said 96 new spaces would be provided when the Training Unit on the Mountjoy prison campus in north Dublin came back on stream after renovation.

A new redevelopment in Limerick Prison, also set to open later this year, would bring 90 men’s spaces on stream and 40 for women.

Ms McEntee said she had recently met with the POA and prison service and both had raised the issue of overcrowding with her, as well as staffing levels in jails.

The POA raised the issue of a continuing problem of false statements made by prisoners, leading to “unjust and unnecessary court appearances by prison officers”.

Mr Power said three years ago one of its members was in the dock of a Circuit Court, accused of assaulting a prisoner and of making a false statement to gardaí.

“CCTV quite clearly showed that the officer had done nothing wrong and the only false statement was that of the prisoner.

“This officer followed his training to the letter of the law, it was textbook, straight from the Irish Prison Service Control & Restraint Manual, a manual the judge said held no weight in his court but a manual that is still in use today,” he added.

“Despite the fact that two independent expert witnesses were willing to testify that the actions of this officer on the day were exemplary and that the CCTV footage of the incident could be used as a training video, the officer and his family had to endure the stresses of an entire trial because the Prison Service refused to stand up and protect their staff member.

“This officer stood in court and listened as his employer offered him no protection in front of the judge. The employer merely stated that the Irish Prison Service had no role to play. Thankfully the jury stood up and found the officer not guilty,” he explained.

“All it takes is for a prisoner to make a Category A complaint and our members are under investigation for doing their job.

“The Prison Officers Association will continue to support our members in these situations, but the day is fast approaching when we will have to advise our members when there is trouble in our prisons to step back and just call the Gardai.

“This is something we would not wish to do, however, we have a duty to protect our members,” he added.

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