MAN is put into a padded cell in a prison somewhere in the State. Under the statutory prison rules of 1947, a civil servant in the Department of Justice should make a record of this.

Hundreds of prisoners are taken in and out of prison every day, to attend court hearings, on temporary release or for medical treatment. Again, an official in the Department fills in a ministerial order for every trip. Forms are filled, stamped and filed and the cogs turn.

Or at least that's the theory.

According to one prison source, system breakdowns are regular. It is only when the consequences are serious that the cock ups become public. The view from the ground is that the Minister for Justice is "responsible for everything and in control of very little". Those in control are nameless, faceless and blameless.

There are 60 staff in the Department assigned to the prisons section, which is controlled by an assistant secretary. He has three principal officers, who are responsible for buildings, staff and operations which oversees the day today running. The prisons section accounts for the second largest chunk of the Department's budget, at £118.9 million.

Each principal officer has several assistant principals responsible to them. Operations is the busiest section, processing huge volumes of paperwork which accompany every prisoner's every move.

As far back as 1985, the Whitaker inquiry into the prison system said the detailed administration of prisons had "moved to an excessive degree into the Department of Justice to the detriment of discretion and responsibility, and therefore of good management".

A similar picture of an antiquated system crippled by a culture of buck passing was painted of the courts six months ago. The Courts Commission, chaired by Supreme Court judge, Mrs Justice Susan Denham, found there was no clear management structure with accountability and responsibility.

According to the Denham report, there are 48 civil servants in the Department of Justice involved in running the courts section. According to the Department's figures, there are 22. The courts section has a budget of £27.8 million. This does not include judges' salaries, criminal legal aid or building and maintenance costs.

The Department says it estimates that its own administrative costs for running the courts division this year will be £528,000.

There was "an inadequate organisational relationship between the Department of Justice and court staff", the report found, "resulting in a lack of basic empowerment or decision making".

The mistake over the delisting of Mr Justice Lynch was a disaster waiting to happen. Under scorching political heat this week, the Government decided to grant two of the most radical demands of legal reformers: putting the administration of the courts and prisons into independent and clearly accountable hands.

The move has been widely welcomed, with sighs of "at last" by most of those involved. Those at the coalface view the civil servants who run the system with distrust.

"They do not understand the complexity, the difficulties, or even the importance of their work," a prison source said.

The blueprints for the new prisons and courts bodies are in the reports of Dr T. K. Whitaker and Mrs Justice Denham.

Until 1928, a three person board ran the prison system. This function was then swallowed by the Department. In 1985, Whitaker recommended an executive board to manage the prisons under a director, "as the manager responsible for the efficient functioning of the system". The board would have representatives from five key areas: operations, regimes personnel finance and medical. The director would also sit on a non executive advisory board.

According to Ms Valerie Bresnihan, chairwoman of the Penal Reform Trust, the fundamental requirement of a prisons board is that it has actual powers to force accountability.

"The most ideal and radical solution is that it would be completely independent," she says. "And ideally coming out of this independent board you would have an inspector of prisons. But if the reports of this board are not published in full," she warns, "there is a danger that there will just be more of the same."

CRIMINOLOGIST Paul O'Mahoney sees this week's developments as a move towards the Scandinavian system. "Under this model, managers of prison systems will appear on TV when there's a riot, rather than the Minister, and their heads will roll if something goes wrong."

He says Justice is unique among Departments in the level of control it has over 2,000 prisoners and a similar number of prison officers. A prisons board should empower the professionals to do their jobs, he says. Then there is the question of where the probation and welfare service would fit in. "Are they to become an independent body or a section of the new prisons board?" Most of their functions are outside the prison sphere, he says.

The independent management body for the courts recommended in the Denham report would be a 16 member courts services board, comprising eight judges, and eight non judges, including a chief executive.

The inclusion of the chief executive on the board was a result of a last minute Cabinet change when the report was published in May. This change split the voting rights equally between judges and non judges. The chief executive would have the rank of a Departmental secretary, with a salary of £75,047.

The eight judges recommended by the report would be the Chief Justice and Presidents of the High, circuit and district courts, and four other judges nominated by these courts. The remaining board members would be a nominee from the Bar Council, Law Society, the ICTU, representatives of the Department of Justice, court staff, court users and a nominee from a business and management body.

The Law Society expressed reservations at the time that the management of the courts should not be the responsibility of judges. It said the Government should reflect further" on the make up of the board.

The fine print plan for the Courts Services Board is expected to be presented to Government by the Denham group within a week.

The consequences of the mistakes over the delisting of Dominic Lynch are still to be played out in the courts. But whatever the results for the 17 prisoners, the Lynch affair appears to have kickstarted the most radical reform of the courts and prisons service in the history of the State.