Mr. David Treacy:

Drugs and contraband coming into prison is not unique to Mountjoy. It is extremely challenging in a prison environment. As the director general said, it is not about what is coming in but the value of what is coming in. In Mountjoy this morning, we have more than 300 prisoners on protection, which is down to issues that are happening in the community, such as drug debts, violence, association with gangs and so on. We are very conscious of what comes in and how we address it. We have a lot of mechanisms in place and we work with our prison community as well. We are well aware a lot of prisoners do not take drugs and do not want to be involved in drug use but may slip into it because of their association with a certain area or gang. We work hard to eradicate it from our prison and have implemented new technologies to keep drugs out of it.

I have had conversations over the years with families who have had people knocking on their door looking for money and been subject to other types of harassment and or attacks on their homes. It is a larger pond than just a person in prison getting drugs. Families are being intimidated and attacked on the outside because of drugs coming into our prison. We work closely with An Garda Síochána and share intelligence to try to combat it. When people seek drugs, they find new ways of getting contraband into our prison, but we constantly try to find ways to cut out these avenues.