Interesting to see the Minister for Justice suing the State (in the shape of Roscommon County Council) over his holiday home in that county.
The case relates to the council's refusal to grant an extension of planning permission to Mr McDowell for the construction of his four-storey retreat in Rooskey.
It is the second time in just a few weeks that Michael McDowell has been publicly involved in the legal system. "I'll see them in court," he trumpeted in response to the 375 suits being taken against him as Minister for Justice, ironically in respect of another matter to do with building.
These cases relate to the absence of toilets in prison cells. Mr McDowell's country residence, we're told, has lots of bathrooms, with all bedrooms discreetly en-suite. In the prisons over which the Minister presides, 800 men are forced to defecate (without privacy) and urinate into pots or buckets, which they must then empty each morning. This is the notorious slopping-out ritual of Mountjoy, Portlaoise, Cork and Limerick prisons.
On foot of a successful legal challenge to the slopping-out regime in Scotland, Irish prisoners are now using the courts system here to highlight similar conditions. Mr McDowell intends to fight them every inch of the way. His Progressive Democrats colleague, Senator John Minehan, has described the prisoners' case as ludicrous, an absolute scam, a blatant attempt to rip off the State. He says their suit should not be tolerated.
Despite Mr Minehan's views, the right of access to the courts can no more be taken away from prisoners than it can from the Minister for Justice. It is further enshrined in Irish law that no citizen should be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment. So the question here in law is whether having to defecate and urinate into a bucket, in the presence of others, and then slopping out the resulting human waste constitutes inhuman or degrading treatment.
The best witness for the prisoners is in fact probably the Minister for Justice himself. "I have no hesitation of saying I found slopping out by prisoners, many of whom are occupying cells on a multiple basis, degrading," he told the Seanad last year. To his own party conference, he used the word "inhumane" to describe the system. Elsewhere he has identified it as both unacceptable and Victorian.
The European Commission for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has repeatedly condemned the slopping out system since 1993. It identified the process as "degrading" and "humiliating", adding that it also debased those prisoner officers who supervised it. In its response, the Irish Government "accepted fully" the CPT condemnation and firmly undertook that all prisons would have in-cell sanitation within seven to eight years.
This of course has not happened, and now the Government and Mr McDowell intend to use taxpayers' money to fight a legal case whose substance they have "accepted fully" for many years.
Mr McDowell claims that the Scottish case is significantly different to anything pertaining in this country. However, the slopping-out system in Scottish prisons is in fact almost identical to its Irish equivalent. The judge in question, Lord Bonomy, had no hesitation in finding that it constituted in itself "degrading treatment". In his measured, 85-page judgment, he added that it would induce "shame, disgust, loss of self esteem, low mood, anxiety, tension and anger" in anyone subjected to it.
It is not just the Scottish case which stands as a legal precedent supporting the Irish prisoners' claim. Our own courts adjudicated on a similar matter as far back as 1980. A female prisoner in Mountjoy claimed that having to go to the toilet in a bucket and with no privacy violated her constitutional rights. Justice Barrington in the High Court agreed, and only stayed his order to the prison service to rectify matters in the light of a commitment from them that the system was being reformed.
It took almost two decades, but at least now no woman in Mountjoy has to slop out.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the majority of patients in one of our hospitals are also forced to use a bucket for their toilet needs, slopping it out every morning. This too has been condemned repeatedly by almost every inspection body both within and outside the State. The institution concerned is the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. That people here are forced to clean their own faeces out of a bucket simply because they suffer from a mental illness is surely the epitome of obscenity.
In essence, the State has condemned itself out of its own mouth so often that serious questions now need to be asked about the wisdom of fighting the slopping-out cases in court. It could certainly be argued that the current, aggressive approach, entailing large legal fees and prolonged wrangling, is both wasteful and a reckless use of taxpayers' money. And, as fat fees change hands, a shameful system continues to degrade and humiliate hundreds of men every day of their lives.
mraftery@irish-times.ie