A prisoner who committed suicide in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, early yesterday morning had been under special observation and was being checked every 15 minutes by prison staff.
The man was in his late 30s and from Dublin. He had been in Mountjoy since September 25th last when he was committed on remand.
The prisoner had suicidal tendencies and for that reason was under special observation, which requires a prisoner be checked in his cell by prison officers every 15 minutes.
A spokesman for the Prison Service said the man was checked at 2.45 a.m. and everything was normal. However, when prison officers went back 15 minutes later they found him hanging from the window by his bed sheet. He was taken to the Mater Hospital and pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
The man had been sharing a cell but his cellmate was asleep at the time. The deceased had previous convictions and had been in Mountjoy Prison before and so was familiar with the prison system.
The death is under investigation by gardai and there will be a coroner's inquest. The prison governor will also carry out an investigation for the director general of the Prison Service.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the Department wanted to express its sympathy to the family of the deceased. He said that while the possibility of suicides in prison, as in society generally, could not be completely prevented, there were procedures in place. In fact, many possible deaths were prevented in prisons by the alertness and the vigilance of the prison staff.
The preventive measures in place were under continuous review. Each suicide was investigated to see if anything could be learned, he said.
At the end of November, a national steering group looking into deaths in custody met to examine the most recent suicides in prison. The group concluded there were no major omissions to the procedures, but a number of proposals were put forward that are being examined.
Among the possible moves are the provision of in-cell cameras, a high-support facility, and a service that would enable inmates to talk to a delegated inmate who would understand the problems. The problem of drugs in prison is also being studied further.
This latest death is the fourth prison suicide in two months and the sixth since January. The previous death was that of a 25-year-old man in Mountjoy Prison early in November. The week before that a prisoner committed suicide in Wheatfield Prison. Both had hanged themselves with a bed sheet.
The Labour party spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, yesterday called on the Government to undertake a root and branch reform of prison health services. It was clear the prison health and psychiatric services were wholly inadequate, she said.
The management of prison health services should be transferred from the Department of Justice to the Department of Health. Healthcare should be delivered by health professionals, rather than prison administrators who had a wide range of responsibilities to fulfil.
The director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, Dr Ian O'Donnell, said more prisoners had died by their own hand in the last decade that ever before.
As long as disturbed men, women and children were crammed into unsuitable institutions with inadequate therapeutic facilities, self-harm would continue, he said.