As reported by my colleague Fatima Gunning, Dublin District Court heard this week that there is currently no drug counsellor available at Cloverhill Prison.
Cloverhill in Dublin is the largest remand prison in the country, and it comes just over a year after the Council of Europe (the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment) warned that there was a “deeply troubling pattern of deaths in custody,” some of which were preventable.
The 2024 report noted that in Cloverhill, deaths related to prisoners suspected of internally concealing drugs – so-called “body packers” – highlighted deficiencies in care protocols. The report said that the absence of detailed or meaningful critical incident reviews meant that similar deaths had recurred in the prison, reflecting a failure to put in place necessary safeguards.
The cases of prisoners trying to bring drugs into the prison are numerous, and well documented in the media. You can find an array of headlines detailing attempts to fly drones over the prison for attempted drug deliveries (and avoiding jail terms).
Last year, we had the State’s own prison watchdog calling for greater measures to prevent prisoners “being pressured and coerced into bringing drugs and other contraband into prisons” in the wake of an investigation into the death of a young Cloverhill inmate four years ago. The Office of the Inspector of Prisons also said that the Irish Prison Service should intensify its efforts to physically prevent such items from entering the country’s jails and to detect any contraband once on the premises.
What is fascinating is that we, as taxpayers, fund NGOs like the Penal Reform Trust, which, at a time when many people in Ireland would agree we need to build more prisons, the focus is on working towards less jail sentences. We hear a lot about the social exclusion faced by prisoners, promoting the successful reintegration of prisoners into society, and a lot about expanding the use of non-custodial sentences.
Drugs are a constant issue in the courts – and there have been sharp increases in categories of criminal behaviour including assaults, drug possession, and drug dealing. Drugs are wreaking havoc not only on the streets of our towns and cities, but in our prisons, but for all the talk of community-based alternatives to prison (with the Penal Reform Trust often citing overcrowding), basic things like the provision of a single drug counsellor to the population of Cloverhill Prison cannot be secured.
Surely there should be a focus on trying to help inmates out of substance addictions in the hope of slashing the national reoffending rate. Figures from 2024 show that over 61% of prisoners in this country go on to reoffend within three years. And the number of drug counsellors available to prisoners continues to fall. Mountjoy has the highest number of counsellors, with 3.7 positions, according to 2023 data, however this was a fall from 4.4 the previous year, and five in 2018 and 2019. Services in Wheatfield Prison were also noted to have fallen from 3.3 positions to 2.2. Mountjoy has been on record as having the highest number of addiction counsellors – 3.7 – as the country’s largest jail.
We know from prison chaplains that the amount of drugs flowing into prisons is “extremely concerning,” with one report from as far back as 2019 describing it as a “tragedy” that some inmates arriving into jail clean can actually leave as addicts.
According to the Irish Prison Service, drug addiction counsellors are available in all prisons, but that’s simply not true.If we want prison to be properly rehabilitative, then surely addiction needs to be addressed – it is, after all, a significant reason why people end up in prison in the first place.
There remains no will to fix the problem, two years on from figures provided by then Justice Minister Helen McEntee which confirmed there are just 20 addiction counsellors working across the Irish Prison Service – with no increase in the number of addiction counsellors working in Irish jails in nearly a decade. This is despite the fact that 70% of prisoners have addiction issues, according to the IPS.
Ms McEntee said at the time, when questioned on the issue by Green Party TD Patrick Costello, that the Irish Prison Service engages Merchants Quay Ireland to provide a prison-based addiction counselling service across the entire Irish Prison Service estate, with the exception of Arbour Hill Prison.
Frankly, too many Irish politicians and well-funded NGOs seem to be far more interested in supervised drug injection clinics, where users can go and stick needles in their arms under medical supervision. The opening of the Merchant’s Quay centre in Dublin City Centre, a stone’s throw away from a primary school which voiced numerous objections, is one such example. Getting soft on drugs is an impending public policy disaster. Drug availability in prisons is a non-issue because the national narrative is focused on erasing stigma and trying to get the public onside with more positive attitudes to drug addicts.
In an Ireland engulfed in a drugs crisis, we appear more than happy to accept criminal drug use, while doing very little to actually help those in need of rehabilitation. In the case of our prisons, it seems we are actively creating a situation where it’s almost impossible to avoid the temptation of drugs in prison, with absolutely no help for those with addiction. We should not treat addiction as a social good, but as a social ill, which raises the obvious question about what to do about it – and providing addiction counselling in our prisons would be a start.