The funeral of the Inspector of Prisons, former High Court judge Dermot Kinlen, is taking place today.

STRIKING tributes were paid yesterday in Kerry to former High Court judge, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen, who died at his holiday home in Sneem. He was in his late 70s.

Tributes were paid today to the Inspector of Prisons, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen, who died at his Kerry home.

Former High Court judge Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen has died at his residence in the early hours of this morning.

The appointment of Dermot Kinlen as the country’s first statutory Inspector of Prisons is a welcome development.

OUTSPOKEN Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen is to be the country’s first statutory Inspector of Prisons.

A MIDLANDS prison has more than 20 sex offenders, but has no treatment programme for them.

REWARDS of extra television channels and more movies as an incentive to inmates trying to kick drug habits have been backed by the Inspector of Prisons.

EVIDENCE of widespread bullying in one jail against inmates, particularly foreigners, has been uncovered by the Inspectors of Prisons.

SMUGGLED drugs are leading to gangland feuds in Limerick prison, with prisoners being put into 23-hour lock-up for their own protection, a report by the Inspector of Prisons has found.

JUSTICE MINISTER Michael McDowell has back tracked on his original plans regarding the establishment of the prison inspectorate.

What an extraordinary attack Justice Minister Michael McDowell launched at the Inspector of Prisons, retired High Court judge Dermot Kinlen, in a radio interview at the weekend.

NOT for the first time has Justice Minister Michael McDowell inexplicably turned a deaf ear to the scandalous conditions that prevail in Mountjoy Prison, the country’s largest jail.

JUSTICE MINISTER Michael McDowell is using St Patrick’s Institution as a “warehouse for young people” where they can learn the finer points of crime, the Prison Inspector claimed yesterday.

Pressure was mounting on Michael McDowell today following the suicide of an inmate at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison.

THE appointment of a former Justice Department official to investigate last week’s murder of Gary Douch in Mountjoy Prison has been criticised by the Inspector of Prisons, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen.

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.

THE necessity to establish an independent inquiry into the death of a prisoner in Mountjoy Prison is indicative of the intolerable overcrowding conditions that have been allowed to flourish in recent years by the policy of the present Government, spearheaded by Justice Minister Michael McDowell.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell last night hit back at trenchant criticism of the prison system by outspoken Inspector of Prisons Dermot Kinlen, who had described the system as a “total failure”.

The Justice Minister has said he's not surprised by the Inspector of Prisons accusation that the Irish Prison System is a total failure.

FORTY offenders escaped from an open prison over a 12-month period, a jail inspection report revealed yesterday.

THE return of the revolving prison door is “inevitable”, such is the overcrowding crisis in jails, prison officers claimed yesterday.

The Midlands Prison has a very high rate of staff absences with an average of 20 people on sick leave each day, the Prisons Inspector said today.

OVER €5 million has been spent on plans to develop a prison that is due to close, according to the Prison Inspector.

The drug free Training Unit in Mountjoy Prison should be kept in Dublin and not moved to a new complex miles from the capital, the Inspector of Prisons said today.

Cormac O'Keeffe

THE inhibitions maintained against the proper inspection of prisons, as outlined by former High Court Judge Dermot Kinlen, constitute a serious indictment of the Department of Justice.

THE Inspector of Prisons has accused the Department of Justice of trying to cover up unacceptable conditions in jails.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell last night threatened to privatise new jails unless prison officers accept his pay offer within 10 days.

PRIVATE prisons should be tried as an experiment to see if commercial companies could handle inmates more cheaply and efficiently than the Irish Prison Service, according to the Inspector of Prisons.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell was yesterday accused of “censoring” the Inspector of Prisons under new plans.

John Breslin

THE Inspector of Prisons has launched another attack on the Department of Justice, branding its attitude to prisoners with less severe mental health problems as “unchristian, inhumane and self-serving.”

INADEQUATE psychological counselling, poor treatment programmes for sex offenders and drug use are three of the major shortcomings in Irish prisons, according to the Inspector of Prisons, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell will only give the prisons inspector Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen statutory powers after the cash crisis facing the service is resolved.

THE Inspector of Prisons, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen, has delivered a scathing attack on the Government for its failure to support his office and act on his complaints about prison conditions.

PRISONERS at a midlands prison have to travel more than 50 miles for psychiatric assessment because the local hospital will not treat them.

PRISON rights’ activists last night welcomed suggestions by Justice Minister Michael McDowell that Dublin’s Mountjoy prison may be destroyed and be replaced by a new facility outside the city.

THE Government’s record on prisons was condemned last night, following the publication of a report on the State’s penal system.

Mountjoy Jail should be knocked down and replaced, according to the first ever report by the inspector of prisons.

MORE than 60 Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats officials have been appointed to lucrative positions on prison visiting committees, it has emerged.

A prison committee visiting system which was established more than eighty years ago is quite glaringly in need of an overhaul, especially one which is obviously a vehicle for political grace and favour.

A Dublin man has been given early release from his 10-year sentence for raping a woman whom he dragged into bushes and subjected to almost seven hours of violent sexual molesting in 1996.