THE Mountjoy prison siege appears to have resulted from a botched escape attempt by the prisoners involved, according to the prison governor.
Mr John Lonergan said it became clear during the siege, which ended last Monday night, that the prisoners had not staged the drama at the jail's separation unit to complain about their conditions or innocence of any charges.
"There's no way I'll ever believe that it was to do with conditions. They had a bigger agenda. What's the biggest agenda for a prisoner? It's to escape," he said.
"But they were confined to that area and they hadn't any opportunity to escape. They were unable to pursue their agenda."
Six prisoners held four prison officers hostage in the unit from Saturday evening until late last Monday night, when the hostages were released physically unharmed.
The peaceful end to the 53-hour siege was "a wonderful achievement by prison staff," the governor said.
Asked why he thought the prisoners had ended the siege, he said it had become clear to them that they would gain nothing from continuing to hold the prison officers hostage.
He added that the training and experience of the negotiators had paid dividends, and he criticised the continued emphasis on violence against prisoners, rather than by them, in the public discussion of prison regimes following the siege.
The governor insisted that there was no ill-treatment of prisoners in the separation unit of the prison.
"I reject out of hand any suggestion that prisoners there are subjected to brutalised treatment. I can vouch for that, I can absolutely state that they were not being brutalised."
The six prisoners are now held in Portlaoise while the room where the siege took place remains sealed off from the rest of the prison, as it is being examined by Garda scene-of-crime officers.
Meanwhile, the Prison Officers Association met Department of Justice officials yesterday to discuss the implications of the hostage-taking incident.
A POA spokesman said that the meeting had focused on whether policy changes were needed.
On Monday, Mountjoy's 600 staff are to meet and some are expected to call for new ways to restrain prisoners who have been proven violent.
While there are prisons of varying levels of security within the institutions most prisoners tend to be subject to the same regime.
Prison officers are expected to press for a new categorisation of prisoners, so that in each closed prison those considered violent are held under a stricter regime.
Among the options to be considered are restrictions on the movements of volatile prisoners or on the numbers that can be together at any one time.
Physical restraints such as handcuffs or shackles may be deemed necessary for the most violent prisoners.