A REPORT on the hostage taking is being compiled by the chairwoman of the Mountjoy Visiting Committee, Ms Nuala Fennell, and will be submitted to the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen.
Ms Fennell was in the prison yesterday and had a meeting with the governor, Mr John Lonergan. She declined to comment yesterday on the incident.
A spokeswoman for the Irish Penal Reform Trust said its committee members were prepared to act as intermediaries in the standoff.
Ms Valerie Bresnihan, who has been a member of previous visiting committees, said it was important that "people the prisoners can trust" were involved. She blamed "lack of things to do in the prison" for the current violence.
Ms Bresnihan said the situation was "waiting to happen for years" and claimed that as long as the prison was "so woefully overcrowded" similar events would occur. She said the separation unit where the prison officers were being held was the "worst building in the prison.
She said Ireland was in breach of an EU convention by putting remand and convicted prisoners in the same building.
Holding the prison officers would "not help to get prison conditions improved", she said, and might "mean that attitudes would harden among prison officers".
Labour TD Mr Joe Costello appealed to the prisoners to release the staff unharmed.
He said it was virtually unheard of for prisoners to take prison staff hostage in Ireland, and such a development could have serious adverse effects on reform.
He said the Department of Justice should commit itself to a full investigation of the prisoners' complaints and publish the findings. He added that if the prisoners wished to make formal allegations of ill treatment to the gardai, they were entitled to do so and to have the allegations investigated by the gardai.
Mr Costello also called on Mrs Owen to establish the promised prison board urgently so that a new model of prison administration could be put in place.