Fianna Fail’s Éamon Ó Cuív has defended his intervention on behalf of a drug dealer who killed an associate and stored his body in a freezer for five years.

Mr Ó Cuív, a former minister, wrote a letter to the Irish Prison Services on behalf of a Galway man who wanted to be moved from a high security facility to an open prison.

The Galway man was jailed for manslaughter for eight years in 2009. He had applied to be moved from Midlands Prison to Shelton Abbey in 2012.

Mr Ó Cuív had asked in July 2012 to be informed when a decision had been made on the application, which was refused in August the same year.

Mr Ó Cuív told RTÉ radio today it was well-known he worked with prisoners, particularly in Northern Ireland, and he had "never gone behind closed doors" .

“I’ve been deeply involved with prisoner issues for 20 years,” he said. “The idea of prison system is about reform.”

Mr Ó Cuív said he stood by his decision and insisted he thought “long and hard” before making representations for cases.

“I have to do what I believe is right,” he said. “If in my heart I feel I have done what is right then I am willing to live with that perception. I accept people will have a problem with it.”

The controversy comes after it emerged his party's justice spokesman Niall Collins wrote to a judge asking for a man convicted of drug offences not to be sent to prison.

Mr Collins had handwritten a letter to appeal to the judge not to jail the man - a widower with four children - on “compassionate grounds”.