The convicted murderer, Mark Nash, has refused to attend the inquest today into the murder of two Dublin women five years ago.
Ms Sylvia Shields and Ms Mary Callinan, two patients in Grangegorman psychiatric hospital, were brutally stabbed to death in their home on March 6th, 1997.
Nash was later convicted of two other murders, of Catherine and Carl Doyle in Roscommon the following August. He is serving two life sentences for the Roscommon murders in Arbour Hill prison.
When arrested in connection with these murders Nash also confessed to murdering the two women in Grangegorman. However, he later withdrew this confession. He has never been charged with the crime. Nash was served with a summons to appear at the inquest by the Dublin City Coroner, Dr Brian Farrell.
However, according to a spokesman for the Prisons Service, he indicated to the governor of the prison he did not wish to attend.
It is open to the coroner, under the Coroners Act, to go to the High Court and seek a court order compelling him to attend. Earlier this year a woman was compelled to attend an inquest in Dublin, and the High Court order was upheld when it was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The spokesman for the Prisons Service said yesterday that the governor of Arbour Hill would produce Nash at the Coroner's Court tomorrow if a High Court order was obtained.