The governor of Mountjoy Prison has defended new visiting procedures at the prison following criticism of them by the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson.
Mrs Robinson said at the weekend the new regime was causing "very real hardship" to prisoners and their families. She said it should be reconsidered.
Mr John Lonergan, the prison's governor, said yesterday he was "totally satisfied" with the new regime and there was no question of it being reconsidered.
He said it appeared there had been a misunderstanding of the new procedures which require visitors to produce photographic identification to prison staff. The new system also involves prisoners nominating in advance who they want visits from.
The aim was not to restrict prison visits or to cause hardship to families but for security reasons and to prevent drugs being smuggled into the prison.
"There is a misunderstanding. People think we are in some way trying to cut down on visits or in some way interfere with family visits or visits from friends or employers. I'm not the slightest bit anti-visit or in any way antagonistic about prison visits. They are a very important part of prisoners' lives. This has nothing got to do with restricting visits or making it awkward. Our objective is to ensure that people who come into the prison are identified, no more and no less. We want to know who they are."
Mr Lonergan said there had been hundreds of examples over the years of prisoners walking out for a visit only to find they had no idea who their visitor was. This would now be eliminated.
He said the only people experiencing hardship were those trying to get into the prison with drugs and the "cowboys" trying to "manipulate the system".
"Over the last three or four weeks we have turned away nobody. Nobody is being turned away for the reason of identification at the moment but we are establishing the practise and in the New Year hopefully everyone will be au fait with it."
He added he had received tremendous support for the change from "quite a substantial amount of the prisoners here and their families. Lots of people have said to us it was about time."