A man previously jailed for damaging a €10m Monet painting has had second-thoughts about representing himself in an appeal for handling another artwork stolen from a stately home.

Two prison officers were slashed with a makeshift blade yesterday, one across his forehead, in an attack carried out by an inmate with a “track record” of assaulting jail staff.

Multi-billion euro fraudster David Drumm is working as a cleaner in the basement of Mountjoy Prison, the Irish Examiner understands.

Gang culture is posing such a threat at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin that up to one in four inmates are seeking to be confined to a solitary cell for their own protection.

A High Court dispute between a Church of Ireland Minister and Archbishop Michael Jackson has been settled.

Inmates have been given €498,708 in interest-free loans by the Irish Prison Service in the past three years.

The number of fine defaulters being jailed has halved in the first three months of this year, according to official figures.

The number of people being jailed for failing to pay court fines has fallen by around 1,000 following the introduction of laws aimed at effectively eliminating the sanction.

A jury at an inquest into the death of a prisoner at Mountjoy has recommended that refusals of treatment be overseen by staff with a medical background.

The State has spent more than €50m to date on the doomed super prison project at Thornton Hall — and the north Dublin site is currently valued at just €2m.

From leafy Clontarf to a little cell in C Block, from a Victorian red-brick residence to a Victorian prison, Ivor Callely will wonder whether the €4,000 was worth it.

Startling figures show that 44 young offenders in St Patrick’s Institution — a fifth of its inmates — are locked up in their cells 23 hours a day.

The Mother of Anthony Ward has appeared in court in Limerick, charged with her son's murder.

An inmate at Mountjoy prison has commenced a High Court challenge against the decision to discipline him for setting fire to netting placed around the prison to prevent contraband from being thrown into the jail.

The former governor of Mountjoy Prison has said that there needs to be a public debate about how to punish those who break the law.

Some 15,000 illegal items have been seized from detainees in Irish prisons over the past two years.

MOUNTJOY Prison has “more drugs than sweets in the tuck shop”, according to the latest damning report by the jail’s visiting committee.

THERE are 409 prisoners currently on the run, the Minister for Justice has admitted, including 50 people wanted for attempted murder, assault and harassment.

ONE of the country’s longest serving and most outspoken prison governors, John Lonergan, last night marked his retirement, warning that he first raised overcrowding issues at the jail 25 years ago.

Gardaí and the governor of Mountjoy Prison are investigating an incident at the jail that resulted in an inmate being stabbed and four prison officers being hospitalised.

The Inspector of Prisons' latest report into Dublin's Mountjoy Jail has revealed chronic overcrowding, security problems and degrading treatment of inmates.

A teenage boy appeared in court today in connection with the stabbing of a garda in Westport in Co. Mayo, in the early hours of Sunday morning last.

A jury has been discharged in a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court sex assault trial because one of its members has six previous convictions and six outstanding bench warrants.

EIGHT prisoners have been disciplined after it was discovered they were accessing their Bebo website using mobile phones.

The jury in the trial of a 28-year-old man accused of committing murder in Mountjoy Prison has been shown video footage of the alleged incident.

PERSISTENT overcrowding of Irish prisons is leading to higher suicide rates, aggression between inmates and the spread of infectious diseases, prison officers claimed last night.

Prisoners in Irish jails have tested positive for drugs more than 40,000 times in the past three years.

Approximately 300 prison officers at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin have left their posts and are protesting at the prison’s entrance.

Severe overcrowding, drugs, and the lack of in-cell sanitation are major problems in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison, a report revealed today.

THE row over the move of the Central Mental Hospital to a new prison site has taken a major twist with the emergence of the highly critical views of the hospital’s medical boss.

Mountjoy Prison is to get a team of dedicated counsellors to treat the 250 inmates battling heroin addiction in the jail, it was revealed today.

NEW research on babies living behind prison bars with their mothers has recommended a special unit be set up in Irish jails.

The Irish Penal Reform Trust is calling for an independent inquiry into the problems besetting Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

The regime at Mountjoy Prison is expected to come under renewed scrutiny today following the deaths of two inmates in a 12-hour period yesterday.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell last night moved to ease overcrowding at Mountjoy jail in the aftermath of a gruesome killing there earlier this month.

FORMER High Court judge Dermot Kinlen is well placed to be critical of the manner in which the independent inquiry into the death of Gary Douch in Mountjoy Prison is being conducted.

MOUNTJOY Prison, known colloquially as “the Joy”, has been the alma mater for some of this country’s most hardened and notorious criminals.

THE planned renovation of Mountjoy Prison will be the new jewel in the crown in the heart of north Dublin.

One of six inmates who held five Mountjoy Prison officers hostage during a siege in the Dublin jail almost 10 years ago was today sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

THE State could make €2 billion from the sale of Mountjoy Prison for residential and commercial development, it was claimed yesterday.

TÁNAISTE and Health Minister Mary Harney last night compared the way the State treats patients at the Central Mental Hospital with conditions meted out to Nelson Mandela by the Apartheid regime.

The Green Party has called on the Government to clarify its intentions regarding Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.